ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL NONSENSE!

By Edwin Cooney

I know, you’re too sophisticated to believe in Santa Claus, but not me!  For that dab of naiveté I’ve always been grateful to Professor Clement Clarke Moore.

His poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which you and I know as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”) was written in Manhattan in 1822 and published a year later by the Troy, New York Sentinel.  A professor of Greek and Hebrew Languages as well as of Theological and Biblical Learning at the Protestant Episcopal Church Seminary of Theology in New York, Moore was the father of six children and it was for their wonderment and enjoyment that he composed this wonderful poem on Christmas Eve of 1822.  When it was finally published on Tuesday, December 23^rd, 1823 in Troy, New York -- having been sent to the Sentinel by a friend whom the paper never identified -- “A Visit from St. Nicholas” became the second most famous document published in America in 1823.  More about that later!

The poem, as I see it, has three wonderful aspects – overwhelming audacity of expectation, celebration of the future, and defiance of logic and science.

Clement Moore’s St Nicholas’s audacity (Moore never refers to him as Santa or Santa Claus) can be found in his expectation that he’s welcome in the home of every child in every country in the whole wide world.  Imagine the level of certainty you’d possess, or even more, how insufferable you might be, if you knew you were welcome in only half of the homes on earth.  St. Nick feels perfectly free to enter!  Sure, he’s bringing material gifts to the future doers and deciders of the world, but they’re only the outward symbols of a broader gift – a gift we might call unconditional love.  As everyone knows, unconditional love triumphs over such intellectual demands as states’ rights, civil liberties and balanced government.  St. Nicholas obviously believes in and does what he can do to insure the future happiness and contentment of humankind by his gifts and all that they mean.

Then, there’s the poem’s defiance of aerodynamics and science.  Time is also a victim of Clement Moore’s wonderful nonsense.  After all, aerodynamics, science, logic and time itself are irrelevant to St. Nicholas’s supernatural purpose and mission.

The poem contains both anticipation and fulfillment.  Mrs. Moore in her kerchief (her name was Catharine Elizabeth Taylor Moore) and the good Professor Clement More in his cap have just settled down for a long winter’s nap as nothing is stirring in the house – not even a mouse.  When Santa – whoops, excuse me, St. Nicholas – arrives he’s “lively and quick,” a combination of youth and age with his quickness.  Even more, he’s a miniature as is his sleigh and as are his reindeer.  Magically, by the time his feet touch the living room floor, he’s metamorphosed into the size of a little old man carrying a huge sack of toys.

His “little round belly” that shakes “when he laughs like a bowl full of jelly,” his beard “as white as snow,” “and “the stump of a .pipe held tight in his teeth as the smoke encircles his head like a wreath,” are signs of great age. Ah, Grandpa!

As for his eight tiny reindeer, the first three of their names are action-oriented: Dasher, Dancer, and Prancer.  Comet and Cupid represent the stars and love, while Donder and Blitzen, I’ve read, represent thunder and lightning depending on whether you’re speaking Dutch or German.

The most intriguing reindeer name of the eight is Vixen which can translate as a “bad woman” or even as “an attractive or sexually attractive bad woman.”  It can also be simply an angry woman or as merely a fox from the woods – take your pick!  So, Vixen was foxy.  Professor More, as mentioned above, a professor of Biblical and Theological studies, was also a professor of Oriental and Greek languages.  In short, Clement Clarke Moore was a master of words, thus there may well have been a little mischievous humor in Vixen’s name!

Only reluctantly did Clement Moore “fess up” to having authored “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”  After all, he had a scholarly reputation to live up to, but he finally admitted in 1837 that he’d authored the piece and at the insistence of his children he included it in an anthology of his works in 1844.  Still, there remains some controversy surrounding Moore’s authorship of the poem.  That controversy has, however, been rather successfully countered.  What’s especially intriguing about Henry Livingston, the purported true author of the piece, is that Livingston never claimed authorship of the poem in his lifetime nor is there any version of the poem with his name on it.

Yes indeed, Clement Clarke Moore was a scholar.  His most notable work until the publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was titled “A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language.”  Magical as was St. Nicholas, you can be sure he never put Moore’s tome in anyone’s stocking!

Wonderful as was Moore’s personhood as reflected in this poem, I was sorry to read that he was a slave owner although he never resided in the South.  Politically, Moore was a Federalist and wrote a commentary questioning Thomas Jefferson’s “false religiosity” when the president stood for re-election in 1804.

Things being as they were, Professor Moore still published, as I see it, the second most important document of 1823.  Secretary of State John Quincy Adams undoubtedly wrote the number one document of that year for his boss President James Monroe’s annual message to Congress issued the very same month.  You know it as “The Monroe Doctrine” in which America guaranteed every country in North and South America its independence from unwanted colonization by any European power.

“A Visit from St. Nicholas” is much more imaginative than Adams’ document, and you can be sure that it has never been the basis of an international crisis!

Ah, maybe, after all, it really is the most important document of 1823!

Here it is!  Read it and absorb its magic and you too may have a very merry Christmas.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,
And Mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap —
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen,
"On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;
"To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
"Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"
As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys — and St. Nicholas too:
And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:
He was dress'd all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnish'd with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys was flung on his back,
And he look'd like a peddler just opening his pack:
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples: how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh'd, like a bowl full of jelly:
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh'd when I saw him in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
and fill'd all the stockings; then turn'd with a jerk,
and laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
and away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Troy Sentinel (December 23, 1823)

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY