A Visit from St. Nicholas concludes that Livingston is the true author of the classic work. Notes Further reading 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
Saint Nicholas Nicholas's death. The earliest complete account of Nicholas's life that has survived to the present is a "Life of Saint Nicholas", written in the early ninth century by Michael the Archimandrite (814–842), nearly 500 years after Nicholas's probable death. Despite its extremely late date, Michael the Archimandrite's "Life of Saint Nicholas" is believed to heavily rely on older written sources and oral traditions. The identity and reliability of these sources, however, remains uncertain. Catholic historian D. L. Cann and medievalist Charles W. Jones both consider Michael the Archimandrite's "Life" the only account of Saint Nicholas that is likely to contain