A Visit from St. Nicholas A Visit from St. Nicholas "A Visit from St. Nicholas", more commonly known as "The Night Before Christmas" and "Twas the Night Before Christmas" from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. Some commentators now believe the poem was written by Henry Livingston Jr.. The poem has been called "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American" and is largely responsible for some of the conceptions of Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today. It has had a massive impact on the
A Visit from St. Nicholas expert James Lowe and Dr. Joe Nickell, author of "Pen, Ink and Evidence." On January 20, 1829, Troy editor Orville L. Holley alluded to the author of the Christmas poem, using terms that accurately described Moore as a native and current resident of New York City, and as "a gentleman of "more" merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions." In December 1833, a diary entry by Francis P. Lee, a student at General Theological Seminary when Moore taught there, referred to a holiday figure of St. Nicholas as being "robed in fur, and dressed