'Twas a Few Days After Christmas

If a poem can see 186 Christmases come and go without a lessening of its appeal, you know it is a classic. When Clement Clarke Moore penned it as a Christmas gift for his children in 1822, it was called "A Visit from St. Nicholas." In 1851, it's title was changed to "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."


Considering its ubiquitous popularity, I will presume that you have already read the work (or at least can find the text elsewhere) and will not attempt to reproduce said lines here. Instead, let us take into consideration where Mr. Moore found his inspiration for the jolly old elf, depicted above in an early illustration.

Can it be mere coincidence that the 1821 (just a year before Mr. Moore's poem was reportedly written, though it was not published until 1823) edition of Washington Irving's History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Dietrich Knickerbocker, in which St. Nicholas (Irving's designated patron saint of New York) is described as:

. . . equipped with a low, broad-brimmed hat, a huge pair of Flemish trunk-hose, and a pipe that reached to the end of the bowsprit.

. . . riding over the tops of trees in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children . . . And he lit his pipe by the fire, and sat himself down and smoked; and as he smoked, the smoke from his pipe ascended into the air and spread like a cloud overhead. . . . And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hat-band, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a very significant look; then, mounting his wagon, he returned over the tree-tops and disappeared.

And a few pages later, the same book expands further on the predilections of St. Nicholas:

At this early period was instituted that pious ceremony, still religiously observed in all our ancient families of the right breed, of hanging up a stocking in the chimney on St. Nicholas eve; which stocking is always found in the morning miraculously filled; for the good St. Nicholas has ever been a great giver of gifts, particularly to children.

We are told, in the sylvan days of New Amsterdam, the good St. Nicholas would often make his appearance in his beloved city, of a holiday afternoon, riding jollily among the tree-tops, or over the roofs of the houses, now and then drawing forth magnificent presents from his breeches-pockets, and dropping them down the chimneys of his favorites. Whereas, in these degenerate days of iron and brass, he never shows us the light of his countenance, nor ever visits us, save one night in the year, when he rattles down the chimneys of the descendants of patriarchs, confining his presents to children, in token of the degeneracy of the parents.

Clement Clarke Moore

I most emphatically do not wish to imply that Clement Clarke Moore, a professor at Columbia University and landowner whose estate, Chelsea, lent its name to the Manhattan neighborhood that grew up around it, was a plagiarist. It is merely meant to suggest that we might all do well to read a little more Washington Irving.

And perhaps it is also worth looking back occasionally at the way our cultural icons developed. For instance, in the early 1850s, a decade or so before Thomas Nast crystallized the image of Santa Claus with his illustrations for Harpers, P. T. Barnum was using this poster to promote Jenny Lind's American tour. The caption reads:

SANTA CLAUS AND JENNY LIND.

I'm a jolly old man--I ride in the wind;

The lady behind me is Miss Jenny Lind;

The horse that we ride is a broomstick, you see --

Oh! this is the horse for Miss Jenny and me.

P.S. In the interest of fair scholarship, let me reveal here and now that I first heard about the apparent connection between Moore's poem and Irving's satire in a book on the history of Christmas (I have misplaced the title and cannot look for it at present I am afraid). In the course of writing this post, I am indebted to Mr. Seth T. Kaller for the article on his website that confirmed my memory and supplied the date of Irving's second edition.

Murder Most Mediocre

"The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis."

- Edgar Allen Poe

Oh what a bitter cup! I was prepared for a rare treat when I finally took up a copy of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" this week, but was severely disappointed to discover that my modern literary palette is too coarse for such cautious morbidity. I was expecting something truly macabre and sensational, but instead found only a foreshadowing of my old friend, Arthur Conan Doyle, and his Mr. Holmes.

I suppose I must put this one down to the effect of the 167 intervening years between the story's 1841 publication in Graham's American Monthly Magazine (where Poe was an editor) and today. Perhaps if I had read it then, when the analytical detective was a novel invention, I would have been impressed. But after years of Conan Doyle, Christie, Hammett (though his detectives were not exactly on the same model I suppose), and other 'modern' mystery writers, I simply could not find anything to entrance me in Poe's simple yarn.

This engraving of Mr. Poe was published by Graham's in 1845.

Initial reception of the story was quite favorable, and critics hailed the author as inventive. You see, they had never read Dr. Watson's account of Sherlock Holmes and "the Speckled Band."

In my own defense, I feel I was given false expectations by the illustration on the cover of my book (Harry Clarke, 1919), as well as this other (Aubrey Beardsley, 1890s):


Ever undaunted, I do plan to peruse an 1848 volume of Graham's that I just found on Google Books the next time I have a few spare hours and feel like staring at a screen. . .

A Bridge Sublime

It seems as if in one were cast
The present and the imaged past;
Spanning, as with a bridge sublime,
That fearful lapse of human time;
That gulf, unfathomably spread
Between the living and the dead.

Thomas Love Peacock
Newark Abbey, August, 1842
with a reminiscence of August, 1807

There is a theory of historical reenactment which calls for participants to not only assume the costume, custom, and occasionally characters of people from the past, but to also recreate their world view by studying the literature, science, etc. of the time. In this way they prepare themselves to respond (or at least attempt to do so) to any situation in the manner that the person they are representing might have done.

The limitations of this plan are obvious of course, but it is perhaps one of the most comprehensive invented to date. And it certainly pays due homage to the importance of material records -- be they written, drawn, recorded, etc. -- in communicating beyond our own generation. Washington Irving phrased it far better than I ever could in his word picture "Westminster Abbey" from "The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon," 1819:

Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow men is ever new, active and immediate. He has lived for them more than for himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoyments, and shut himself up from the delights of social life, that he might the more intimately commune with distant minds and distant ages. Well may the world cherish his renown; for it has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure. Well may posterity be grateful to his memory; for he has left it an inheritance, not of empty names and sounding actions, but whole treasures of wisdom, bright gems of thought, and golden veins of language.

Reading that, I begin to think I've been wasting my time with all this knitting. (I must admit here that I just purchased enough yarn for three more pairs of stockings.) Perhaps I should drop my needles in favor of a pen...

On the other hand, perhaps my fondness for reading old books comes from the same source as my penchant for old clothes. When I read a novel or a poem written 150 years ago, I feel somehow closer to not only the writer but to all the others who have read and understood it over the years. When I puzzle through the 1852 instructions for a chemise, I feel a kindred spirit with the many women -- now long dead -- who bent their needles at this very project before me.

Today, a friend who has no interest in sewing, and who prefers the Beat Poets to my musty tomes, pointed out that music is yet another sublime bridge to the distant past. Be it symphonic, operatic, or even a country aire cannibalized by Aaron Copeland, music indeed hath charms to send the modern breast back 150 years. I must resolve to remember this hint in the hopes of enticing more people into appreciation of the 1850s.

God bless Stephen Foster.

Those Honest Days of Yore

"They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more homebred, social, and joyous, than at present!"

-- Washington Irving, 1820

One of the great consolations for life in the present is the splendid vantage point it affords for eulogizing the past. Hindsight claims the privilege of selectivity; it casts a silvery glow over the things we choose to remember, and tactfully obscures those points that interfere with nostalgia.

How many of us, when conforming to modernity becomes onerous, have turned a longing eye to this watercolor vision of yesteryear? What would we not give to return to those harmonious days of sincere affection, beautiful dwellings, and verdant nature -- when men and women rose with the sun and retired after a well-ordered day of joyful labor to an ivy-covered cottage?

Delusional? Perhaps. But our race has earned the right to make its own version of the past -- earned it by enduring all the present days that once were. The gift history brings is the ability to speak to future generations, through oral tradition and written record; to transmit that which is best of ourselves and of our times so that it may be saved, and the rest, like a pain that has subsided, blessedly forgotten.

The past, like a fine wine, benefits from aging, that it may mellow and take on the elusive flavor we are seeking. 150 years seems a decent interval for the cellar. And there is no one left living to tell us what we do not wish to hear. Won't you join me in reliving the best of the 1850s? I chose New York City because that is where I am now -- it's enough to transmute time without worrying about place. Besides, I have a feeling New York City was (as some feel it is now) the place to be in 1850...