A Visit from St. Nicholas is a poem first published anonymously in 1823. It was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. The poem has had a massive effect on the history of Christmas gift-giving.
About A Visit from St. Nicholas in brief
A Visit from St. Nicholas is a poem first published anonymously in 1823. It was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. Moore originated many of the features that are still associated with Santa Claus today while borrowing other aspects, such as the use of reindeer. The poem has had a massive effect on the history of Christmas gift-giving. It has been set to music and has been recorded by many artists. It is said to have been composed on a snowy winter’s day during a shopping trip on a sleigh. His inspiration for the character of Saint Nicholas was a local Dutch handyman as well as the historic Saint Nicholas. In 1837, Moore acknowledged authorship when he included it in his own book of poems in 1844. Professor Donald Foster, who used textual analysis to argue that Moore could not have been the author, has offered a rebuttal to that point of view. He believes that Major Henry Livingston Jr., a New Yorker with Dutch and Scottish roots, should be considered the chief candidate for authorship. The claim, however, has been countered by document dealer and historian Seth Kaller who once owned one of Moore’s original manuscripts of the poem. He claims that Moore’s wife’s family was distantly related to the Livingston family, and that the poem was written by a relative of the Livingstons, not the other way around. The original version of A Visit is more similar to the old Dutch “Donder en Blixem” that translates to “Thunder and Lightning’”.
Modern printings frequently incorporate alterations that reflect changing linguistic and cultural sensibilities. For example, breast in the poem is frequently bowdlerized to crest; the archaic ere in “But I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight’ is frequently replaced with as. This change implies that Santa Claus made his exclamation during the moment that he disappeared from view, while the exclamation is frequently rendered as “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night’” The poem was first published in the Troy, New York Sentinel on 23 December 1823, having been sent there by a friend of Moore, and was reprinted frequently thereafter with no name attached. Moore portrayed his \”jolly old elf\” as arriving on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. By having Saint Nicholas arrive the night before, Moore shifted the focus away from Christmas Day with its still-problematic religious associations. As a result, New Yorkers embraced Moore’s child-centered version of Christmas as if they had been doing it all their lives. At the time that Moore wrote the poem, Christmas Day was overtaking New Year’s Day as the preferred genteel family holiday of the season, but some Protestants viewed Christmas as the result of “Catholic ignorance and deception” and still had reservations. Moore’s conception of Saint. Nicholas was borrowed from his friend Washington Irving, but Moore portrayed him as arriving the day before Christmas.
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This page is based on the article A Visit from St. Nicholas published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
