Twas the Night Before Christmas

INTRODUCTION

midthe many celebrations last Christmas Eve, in various places bydifferent persons, there was one, in New York City, not like any otheranywhere. A company of men, women, and children went together just afterthe evening service in their church, and, standing around the tomb ofthe author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” recited together the words ofthe poem which we all know so well and love so dearly.

Dr. Clement C. Moore, who wrote the poem, never expected that hewould be remembered by it. If he expected to be famous at all as awriter, he thought it would be because of the Hebrew Dictionary that hewrote.

He was born in a house near Chelsea Square, New York City, in 1781;and he lived there all his life. It was a great big house, withfireplaces in it;—just the house to be living in on ChristmasEve.

Dr. Moore had children. He liked writing poetry for them even morethan he liked writing a Hebrew Dictionary. He wrote a whole book ofpoems for them.

One year he wrote this poem, which we usually call “’Twas the Nightbefore Christmas,” to give to his children for a Christmas present. Theyread it just after they had hung up their stockings before one ofthe big fireplaces in their house. Afterward, they learned it, andsometimes recited it, just as other children learn it and recite itnow.

It was printed in a newspaper. Then a magazine printed it, and aftera time it was printed in the school readers. Later it was printed byitself, with pictures. Then it was translated into German, French, andmany other languages. It was even made into “Braille”; which is theraised printing that blind children read with their fingers. But neverhas it been given to us in so attractive a form as in this book. It hashappened that almost all the children in the world know this poem. Howfew of them know any Hebrew!

Every Christmas Eve the young men studying to be ministers at theGeneral Theological Seminary, New York City, put a holly wreath aroundDr. Moore’s picture, which is on the wall of their dining-room. Why?Because he gave the ground on which the General Theological Seminarystands? Because he wrote a Hebrew Dictionary? No. They do it because hewas the author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

Most of the children probably know the words of the poem. They areold. But the pictures that Miss Jessie Willcox Smith has painted forthis edition of it are new. All the children, probably, have seen otherpictures painted by Miss Smith, showing children at other seasons of theyea

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