89 Fun Facts About 'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Under what title was 'Twas the Night Before Christmas first printed, anonymously, in 1823?

Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas ran as the heading over the unsigned verses; the familiar title came later, lifted from the poem's opening words.

How does the poem describe the sleigh when it first appears?

A friend of Moore's sent it to the upstate New York paper; the Sentinel published from 1823 to 1832 and its former office on River Street still stands.

Who is traditionally credited as the poem's author, having claimed it in print in 1837?

Moore, a biblical scholar, was reluctant to be linked to such unscholarly verse and only included it in his 1844 collected poems at his family's insistence.

Which Revolutionary War veteran and poet from Poughkeepsie has been proposed as the poem's true author?

Henry Livingston Jr. never claimed the poem himself, and no printing carries his name; his children said he had read it to them years earlier, and his descendants still press the case.

For whom did Clement Clarke Moore say he originally wrote the poem?

His own kids: in an 1844 letter he said the verses were written 'not for publication, but to amuse my children'.

Which friend of Moore's, author of a satirical History of New York, shaped his St. Nicholas?

Washington Irving's 1809 satire, written as 'Diedrich Knickerbocker', has St. Nicholas riding over the treetops in the wagon that carries his yearly presents to children.

How did Moore's poem differ from Irving's version in the timing of St. Nicholas's visit?

Historians argue the shift 'deftly' moved the focus away from Christmas Day, which some Protestants still viewed with suspicion.

How many reindeer pull St. Nicholas's sleigh in the poem?

Eight is the poem's own count, and its roll call gave Santa's team both the number and the names that later tellings have kept.

'Dunder and Blixem', the last two reindeer in the 1823 printing, come from Dutch words for what?

Thunder and lightning: the 1823 pair echo the Dutch donder and bliksem; later printings respelled them Donder and Blitzen, and 'Donner' is a later change still.

Which department store's 1939 giveaway booklet added Rudolph to Santa's team?

Montgomery Ward had been buying coloring books to give away each Christmas and decided that making its own booklet would save money, so its copywriter Robert L. May wrote Rudolph's story.

In 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, what do the sleeping children dream of?

Sugar-plums were not plums at all but small hard sweets built up in layers of sugar, often around a seed or nut, and visions of them 'danced in their heads' as the children slept.

In 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, what is the narrator wearing for his 'long winter's nap'?

A cap, as in 'mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap': nightcaps were ordinary bedroom wear in cold climates before houses were properly heated.

In 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, what first sends the narrator springing from his bed?

A clatter out on the lawn makes him spring up 'to see what was the matter', and he rushes to the window to look.

In the poem, what gave 'the lustre of mid-day to objects below'?

The moon on the new-fallen snow lit the scene like midday, the poem says, which is how the narrator can make out the visitors as they arrive.

How does 'Twas the Night Before Christmas describe the sleigh and reindeer the narrator first sees?

Miniature and tiny: the poem's visitor is 'a right jolly old elf' with a toy-sized team, yet this small sleigh became the model for how Santa has travelled ever since.

In the poem, the reindeer are said to be 'more rapid than' what?

Eagles: 'More rapid than eagles his coursers they came', and the driver shouts each one's name as they fly in.

To what does 'Twas the Night Before Christmas compare the reindeer flying up to the house-top?

Dry leaves before a hurricane 'mount to the sky' when they meet an obstacle, and that is how the poem lifts the team, the sleigh and its load of toys onto the roof.

In the poem, how is St. Nicholas dressed when he comes down the chimney?

Fur, tarnished with soot: he is 'dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot', his clothes dirtied by the ashes of the chimney, and the verses never mention a red suit.

In the poem, St. Nicholas's nose is compared to which fruit?

A cherry: with rosy cheeks, twinkling eyes and a white beard, the poem's jolly face became the pattern for how Santa Claus has been pictured ever since.

In the poem, what does St. Nicholas hold tight in his teeth?

The stump of a pipe was a borrowed touch: an 1809 satire of old New York had already shown St. Nicholas lighting his pipe and puffing smoke over the treetops.

In the poem, St. Nicholas's little round belly shook when he laughed like what?

A bowlful of jelly is how his 'little round belly' shook, and the sight of the 'chubby and plump' visitor makes the narrator laugh 'in spite of myself'.

What gesture does St. Nicholas make just before rising up the chimney?

Lays a finger beside his nose, then gives a nod and is gone: the gesture was borrowed from an 1809 satire of old New York, where St. Nicholas makes the same sign.

In the poem, what does St. Nicholas say while filling the stockings?

Not a word: 'He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work', and his parting call comes only as he drives out of sight.

In the poem, the sleigh flies away 'like the down of' what?

A thistle: 'away they all flew like the down of a thistle', the team lifting off as lightly as seed fluff the moment the driver springs back into his sleigh.

In the original text, which word comes before 'Christmas to all, and to all a good night'?

Happy, not Merry: the 1823 newspaper text and a 1912 illustrated edition both end with 'Happy Christmas to all', called out as he drives out of sight.

The poem's traditional author was a professor of what subject at New York's General Theological Seminary?

Biblical learning was his life's work, with a Hebrew lexicon published in 1809, yet he is remembered for light verses he said were written 'not for publication'.

Which Manhattan neighborhood grew out of Moore's family estate, which he subdivided and developed?

Chelsea took its name from the family estate; he gave its apple orchard as the site of the General Theological Seminary, then divided the rest into building lots.

In the opening lines of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, the stockings were hung by the chimney with what?

Care: 'The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there', and by the end of the visit he has filled every one.

Which professor used textual analysis in 2000 to argue Moore could not have written the poem?

Foster's case for Livingston was rebutted point by point by document dealer Seth Kaller, who once owned one of Moore's manuscripts of the poem.

The 56 lines of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas are arranged in rhyming what?

Couplets: the lines rhyme in pairs, house with mouse and beds with heads, and the bouncing beat comes from anapests, two light syllables before each stress.

In the poem, what had 'mamma' and the narrator 'just settled' for a long winter's nap?

Our brains: the couple 'had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap' when the noise outside sent the narrator hurrying to the window.

What did a 2012 edition 'Edited by Santa Claus for the Benefit of Children' remove from the poem?

St. Nicholas's pipe and its wreath of smoke were cut by Canadian publisher Pamela McColl, an anti-smoking campaigner, who also added a letter 'from' Santa to the edition.

In the poem, how does St. Nicholas come down the chimney?

With a bound: 'Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound', moments after the narrator hears the team land on the roof above him.

Which jazz legend recited the poem at his Queens home in 1971, months before his death?

Louis Armstrong's reading proved to be his final commercial recording, and it reached listeners as a single offered with cartons of cigarettes.

Which studio made the 1905 silent film The Night Before Christmas, directed by Edwin S. Porter?

Edison's company made it, introducing each scene with lines from the poem; its Santa feeds real reindeer before a model sleigh crosses a painted sky.

Disney's 1933 short The Night Before Christmas belonged to which cartoon series?

Silly Symphonies was its series, and it picked up from Santa's Workshop of 1932: St. Nick brings the toys made in the first film to a house of sleeping children and sets up their tree before they wake.

Which cartoon duo starred in the Oscar-nominated 1941 short The Night Before Christmas?

Tom and Jerry's Christmas chase earned an Oscar nomination but lost to Disney's Lend a Paw; it ends in a truce, with Tom fetching the frozen Jerry in from the cold.

Which studio produced the 1974 animated TV special 'Twas the Night Before Christmas?

Rankin/Bass, the makers of Frosty the Snowman, wrapped the poem inside a new story about a clockmaker and a family of mice, and CBS showed it every year for almost two decades.

In the 1974 special, why is Santa boycotting the town of Junctionville?

A newspaper letter denied his existence, so Santa sent the town's own letters back unopened; a clockmaker then builds a singing clock tower to win him round.

In the poem, what does a wink from St. Nicholas tell the narrator?

He has nothing to dread: the wink and the twist of the head 'soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread', and the visitor turns straight to filling the stockings.

Which song from the 1974 special did Kyle sing in South Park's 'A Very Crappy Christmas'?

South Park even superimposed Joshua Trundle's face over Kyle's during the number.

The 1974 special was animated in Japan by Topcraft, whose assets later went into founding which famous animation house?

Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 on the assets of the bankrupt Topcraft, which had animated Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind a year earlier.

The 2022 Hallmark film 'Twas the Night Before Christmas centers on what annual event?

A mock trial over its author is staged as a play, with two lawyers arguing the case and the audience as jury; a real mock trial in 2013 ended with a hung jury.

In which New York newspaper was the poem first printed on December 23, 1823?

The Troy Sentinel printed it unsigned, with a note from the editor saying he did not know whom to thank for the verses but gave thanks for them all the same.

Besides the historic saint, what local figure inspired Moore's Saint Nicholas, according to tradition?

A Dutch handyman, in some tellings his gardener: he is said to have named a portly, ruddy Dutchman of the neighbourhood as the model for his St. Nicholas.

How does 'Twas the Night Before Christmas describe the 'little old driver' of the sleigh?

Lively and quick: 'a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick', the rhyme that tells the narrator who has come.

In the poem, the driver's cry 'To the top of the porch!' is followed by 'to the top of' what?

The wall: 'To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!', and the whole team sweeps up onto the house-top.

In 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, the narrator flies to the window 'like' what?

A flash: 'Away to the window I flew like a flash', where he tore open the shutters to find out what the noise outside was.

Which 1989 comedy features 'Twas the Night Before Christmas being read on screen?

Christmas Vacation has Clark Griswold gather the family to recite it on Christmas Eve, moments before cousin Eddie arrives with Clark's kidnapped boss.

Clement Clarke Moore's father, an Episcopal bishop, gave communion to which Founding Father dying after a duel?

Alexander Hamilton had to ask twice: Bishop Benjamin Moore first objected that duelling was a mortal sin, then relented once the dying man said he repented.

What kind of being does the narrator of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' call the chubby, jolly visitor?

An elf is exactly what the poem calls him: a little old driver, lively and quick, who drops down the chimney with a bound.

Which company's advertising Santa did painter Haddon Sundblom model on the jolly figure in 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Coca-Cola wanted a wholesome, human Santa for its magazine adverts, so Sundblom took the poem's plump, friendly figure as his model and kept painting him for more than thirty years.

The real St. Nicholas behind 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' was a bishop from a region now in which country?

Turkey holds both Patara, his traditional birthplace, and Myra, where he served as bishop; in 1087 merchants from Bari carried the main bones of his skeleton off to Italy.

Which future Breaking Bad star plays the scheming uncle who takes Santa's sleigh in the Disney film 'Twas the Night?

Bryan Cranston's character knocks Santa out cold, then loots the houses he is supposed to be delivering to, in a 2001 TV movie named after the poem's opening words.

Who directed the 1993 stop-motion film that grew from a Tim Burton poem inspired by 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Henry Selick directed The Nightmare Before Christmas while Burton, whose name sits above the title, was away shooting Batman Returns.

Which rapper's hit The Way I Am runs on the same galloping meter as 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Eminem raps every verse of the single in four-beat lines, each beat two light syllables then a stressed one, the same bounce that carries the Christmas poem.

Which children's author wrote most of his rhyming books in the bouncing meter of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Dr. Seuss leaned on the rhythm for comic verse such as Yertle the Turtle, where its strict regularity gives the lines their breezy, sing-song feel.

Which home for Santa, absent from 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', is traced to a caption in an 1866 magazine engraving?

The North Pole was only hinted at: the caption read 'Santa Claussville, N.P.', and an 1869 poem written for the same pictures spelled the address out.

What is hung by the chimney with care in the opening lines of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Stockings go up in the third line of the poem, and filling every one of them is the only work the visitor is shown doing before he goes.

After tearing open the shutters, what does the narrator of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' throw up?

The sash is the sliding frame of the window, heaved open after he springs from bed and flies across the room like a flash.

Which reindeer does St. Nicholas call first when he shouts their names in 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Dasher heads the roll call, and it was this poem that first gave each of Santa's reindeer a name.

In Tom and Jerry's The Night Before Christmas, what does Jerry hold up to bring Tom's chase to a stop?

Mistletoe wins Jerry a bashful kiss from the cat, and the moment Tom turns his back the mouse kicks him in the rear.

Locust Grove, estate of the rival claimant to 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, later became which inventor's home?

Samuel Morse bought the estate in 1847, three years after his telegraph breakthrough, and had its cottage remodelled into an Italianate villa.

After 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', which Harper's Weekly cartoonist's wartime drawings helped define the modern Santa?

Thomas Nast first drew him for the 3 January 1863 issue, handing out gifts in a Union army camp, dressed in the American flag and dangling a puppet named Jeff.

The 1821 poem Old Santeclaus with Much Delight gave Santa his first reindeer and dressed him in which colour?

Red was the colour of his outfit in its engravings, the earliest published pictures of a Santa figure and the first lithographs printed in the United States.

The name Santa Claus comes from which older gift-bringer, taken to New Amsterdam by early settlers?

Sinterklaas is the Netherlands' name for Saint Nicholas; English speakers in New York wore it down to Santa Claus, a name that had reached the American press by 1773.

In the portrait of St. Nicholas in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, what are his cheeks said to be like?

Roses colour his cheeks in a face built from similes: the same passage draws up his droll little mouth and whitens the beard on his chin.

What signal does St. Nicholas give his team after springing to his sleigh at the end of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

A whistle sends the team off, and it is his second of the night: he also whistles as he first calls the reindeer by name.

With a bundle of toys on his back, St. Nicholas in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas looks like which kind of tradesman?

A peddler just opening his pack is the comparison, a homely image for a saint, and the poem spells the word the old way, 'pedler'.

An early anonymous pamphlet by Clement Clarke Moore condemned the religious views of which sitting president?

Thomas Jefferson was up for re-election in 1804 when the young Federalist called his Notes on the State of Virginia an instrument of infidelity.

Clement Clarke Moore wrote an 1818 pamphlet protesting which New York City scheme that would cut across his estate?

The Manhattan street grid put Ninth Avenue through his land; he called billing owners for the new roads a tyranny, then grew rich selling lots along them.

From which college, where his father served as president, did Clement Clarke Moore graduate as valedictorian?

Columbia made him valedictorian of the class of 1798, and he went on to sit on its board of trustees for 44 years.

Which comic played a father who improvises the famous poem in ABC's 1977 special 'Twas the Night Before Christmas?

Paul Lynde had to recite it five times for five camera angles without cue cards, which the director feared would distract the child actors.

Which 1994 comedy about a father who startles a stranger off his roof includes a reading of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

The Santa Clause turns on that fall: by putting on the vanished man's suit, Scott Calvin accepts a legal technicality that makes the job his.

Which children's author's 1902 Santa story listed ten reindeer, quite unlike those in 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

L. Frank Baum paired them off in rhymes in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus: Flossie and Glossie, Racer and Pacer, Reckless and Speckless.

In Old Santeclaus with Much Delight, an 1821 poem that gave Santa a sleigh, what do naughty children receive?

A birch rod, long and black, is left for the parents to use, and the verse calls that punishment a command of God.

In 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', the droll little mouth of St. Nicholas is drawn up like what?

A bow gives him a curved, smiling mouth, in the same couplet that turns to the white beard on his chin.

In 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', the reindeer are ordered to the top of the wall and the top of what else?

The porch comes first in the command, then the wall, and the team flies up to the house-top with the sleigh full of toys behind it.

Which gesture, with a twist of his head, tells the narrator of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' he has nothing to dread?

A wink of his eye settles it, moments after the narrator has laughed at the sight of the visitor in spite of himself.

In 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', what does the narrator hear each little hoof doing on the roof?

Prancing and pawing is what he hears, and it comes in a twinkling: the team is on the roof before he has drawn his head back in from the window.

Which feature of St. Nicholas's face does the narrator of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' single out as merry?

His dimples are called merry in the very line that opens the close-up of his face, which also notes how his eyes twinkle.

Which ancient language did Clement Clarke Moore compile a lexicon of years before 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' appeared?

Hebrew was his scholarly field: the 1809 lexicon, together with his gift of land, helped win him a seminary professorship that he held until 1850.

What stood on the land Clement Clarke Moore gave for New York's General Theological Seminary, where he later taught?

An apple orchard of 66 tracts from his inherited estate went to the Episcopal diocese, and the seminary moved onto the land in 1827.

In the 1974 special 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, what do Father Mouse and the Trundles build to win Santa back?

A clock tower built to play a special song is their apology, until young Albert climbs inside the works and breaks it in front of the whole town.

Which Honeymooners star had a hit record reciting 'Twas the Night Before Christmas backed only by a jazz drummer?

Art Carney delivered the verse in syncopation against the drums; his other 1950s hit, The Song of the Sewer, was sung in character as Ed Norton.

Which meter, shared with Lord Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib, gives 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' its gallop?

Anapestic tetrameter packs four feet into a line, each two light syllables then a stressed one, a rapid, driving beat well suited to comic verse.

Under which pen name appeared A History of New York, the 1809 satire that fed into 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

Diedrich Knickerbocker, the book's invented narrator, became a nickname for New Yorkers in general and later gave the city's NBA team its name.

Which director of The Great Train Robbery made the first film of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas two years later?

Edwin S. Porter filmed real reindeer for the 1905 short and sent Santa's sleigh across a painted night sky, using less than half the footage he shot.

Which crooner recorded a recitation of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' for RCA Victor with Mitchell Ayres conducting?

Perry Como made the spoken-word record in 1953, two years before another singer, Jo Stafford, put her own version on the album Happy Holiday.