Henry Livingston Jr. Henry Livingston Jr. Henry Beekman Livingston Jr. (October 13, 1748 – February 29, 1828) has been proposed as being the uncredited author of the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", more popularly known (after its first line) as "The Night Before Christmas". Credit for the poem was taken in 1837 by Clement Clarke Moore, a Bible scholar in New York City, nine years after Livingston's death. It was not until another twenty years that the Livingston family knew of Moore's claim, and it was not until 1900 that they went public with their own claim. Since then, the question has
A Visit from St. Nicholas primarily using an anapaestic metrical scheme, and it is claimed that some of the phraseology of "A Visit" is consistent with other poems by Livingston, and that Livingston's poetry is more optimistic than Moore's poetry published in his own name. But Stephen Nissenbaum argues in his "Battle for Christmas" that the poem could have been a social satire of the Victorianization of Christmas. Furthermore, Kaller claims that Foster cherry-picked only the poems that fit his thesis and that many of Moore's unpublished works have a tenor, phraseology, and meter similar to "A Visit". Moore had even written a letter titled