Poem Born On Christmas Eve In Old New York

NEW YORK - It was Christmas Eve, 1822, and snow lay heavily over old New York, the downtown streets and the farmland that occupied most of the island of Manhattan. Sleigh bells jingled through town, but would not inspire "Jingle Bells" for another 35 years.

Clement Clarke Moore, a 43-year-old teacher at an Episcopal seminary, had been at work for weeks with his quill, crafting a secret present for his six children. Now it was done.

Earlier that day Moore rode out in his carriage on Christmas errands with his servant, Patrick, and returned home to his four-story brick farmhouse with the largest turkey he could find in the Washington Market's crowded pens at the tip of the island.

After Christmas Eve dinner, the family retired to the parlor in front of the hearth, with its warming fire. And now Moore unveiled his Christmas gift. His children - Margaret, Charity, Benjamin, Mary, and Clement Jr.- sat at his feet. Infant Emily was in her mother's arms.

He began to read:

"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

"Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. . . ."

When he finished, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight," there was silence, and then exultation. The children prevailed on him to read it again and joined in with lines they remembered. Bedtime interrupted their pleas for a third reading.

But "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was born, and with it a vision of Santa Claus, the sainted gift-giver to children that would decorate the American Christmas, its street corners and department stores, its trees and cards for decades to come. In the 170 years since, children all over the world have held that image and its song in their hearts.

"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. . . .

"He had a broad face and a little round belly

"That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

"He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

"And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself. . . ."

But in the years to follow the history of the poem took a curious turn. Though it was cherished immediately, Moore would not acknowledge authorship publicly for another 15 years, say Gerard and Patricia Del Re in their book, "'Twas The Night Before Christmas."

FIRST PUBLICATION

Although it was passed from hand to hand and copied, it was two days before the next Christmas in 1823 that the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel published it for the first time. It was unsigned and preceded with this, from the newspaper's editor:

"We do not know to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of children - that homey and delightful personage of parental kindness - Santa Claus . . . as he goes about visiting the firesides of this happy land, laden with Christmas bounties; but from whomsoever it may have come, we give thanks for it."

Perhaps Moore thought it too frivolous an enterprise to his standing as a scholar and teacher of Oriental languages and Hebrew, author of "A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language" and pious patron of the Episcopal Church. Or perhaps he thought it a private communion with his children, his family.

But he finally consented to sign it on a reprinting in the New York Book of Poetry in 1837.

The poem is based in part on an old Dutch myth that Moore's friend, writer Washington Irving, related in his "Knickerbocker's History of New York."

Moore had other things on his mind that Christmas season, as well. He stopped regularly to view the construction of the General Theological Seminary, which he helped build. He gave almost the entire Chelsea section of the city to the Episcopal Diocese and helped build nearby St. Peter's Church, which still stands.

The city-ordained grid of streets had not yet reached Chelsea where the few graceful farmhouses were linked by dirt lanes, but to the south the shanties of Greenwich Village were about to give way to the rising city.

But it was part of the romantic spirit of this scholar with a long face and prominent nose, the son of another scholar who became president of Columbia University, to want the homes and churches of Chelsea connected by curving streets and winding lanes.

For Moore was a romantic, say the Del Re's and The Rev. Wray MacKay, today's rector of St. Peter's, evidenced by the letters of his courtship to his wife, Eliza, and his dedication to the church that at one time provided the only education for the poor children of the shantytown to the south. But only on Sunday.

"The church is a highly romantic building," says parishoner and architectural scholar Chris Jenks. "Almost a stage set." Not quite Gothic, but trying to capture the feeling of the Middle Ages.

And the poem itself. "It has the qualities of imagination and fantasy and energy and that's why it endures," MacKay says. "You read it and you just get caught up in it."

The Moores are not buried at St. Peter's. For public-health reasons, Moore attached a covenant to the deed that there there would be no burial grounds in Chelsea. He and his family were interred at St. Luke's in Greenwich Village, but were moved up to the Church of the Intercession in the Bronx, when St. Luke's future was in doubt at the turn of the century.

That neighborhood now is mostly poor Hispanic and black, but the church and its parish house are elegant, reflecting its past. It is built on the old James Audubon farm and he is buried on the grounds. As is Alfred Dickens, a son of Charles Dickens, author of "A Christmas Carol," who died in New York on a trip to America with his father. His grave was long honored yearly at this time of year by New York's Dickens Society in period dress.

AN ANNUAL RITE

Now every Christmas season, after a reading of the poem at the Church of the Intercession, the parishoners and their children troop down the long steep hill toward the Hudson River to the west graveyard.

Next week, led by a St. Nicholas in gold miter and white gown, they will stream past the prestigious mausoleums where lie important New York families like the Astors and Cushmans, and they will pay homage to the poet's grave and that of the Moore family who heard the poem first.