A Visit from St. Nicholas

A Visit from St. Nicholas, narrative poem first published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel (New York) on December 23, 1823. It became an enduring part of Christmas tradition, and, because of its wide popularity, both St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, and the legendary figure Santa Claus were permanently linked with the holiday.

The poem recounts the arrival of St. Nicholas at the narrator’s home on Christmas Eve. Its opening lines set the scene:

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In the hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma 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 my bed to see what was the matter.

The poem’s descriptions of St. Nicholas (believed to have been a 4th-century bishop in what is now Turkey) did much to establish him as the joyful, plump, toy-bearing Santa Claus of the American Christmas tradition. As the poem describes him:

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Poetry: First Lines

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
[…]
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

Its names for the eight reindeer who power his sleigh—Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, and Blixem—have also persisted, more or less intact, throughout Christmas lore. Modernized versions of the poem replace Dunder with Donner and Blixem with Blitzen in its description of how St. Nick exhorts his reindeer:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

Clement Clarke Moore claimed authorship of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” when he permitted inclusion of it in his collection Poems (1844). By his own account, he had written it for the enjoyment of his children for Christmas in 1822. After Moore’s Poems was published, the family of Henry Livingston, Jr.—a soldier, landowner, and poet who died in 1828—disputed Moore’s claim and argued that the poem was Livingston’s. No physical evidence survived to prove Livingston’s authorship, but, in the early 21st century, computer-aided analysis of the text indicated that “A Visit from St. Nicholas” shows more similarities to Livingston’s poetry than to Moore’s.

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