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32 DECEMBER 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
This image adapted from an invitation to the
Long Island City Athletics 33rd Annual Masque Ball, 1909.
Legends
“To All a Good Night!”
BY GREATER ASTORIA
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The coachman arrived
in Chelsea promptly
at 7:00 AM. The wife
supervised loading food and
gifts in the wagon’s boot,
and, with the help of a foot-man,
climbed aboard with her
young child, bundled from
the biting cold. Her husband
took his place on the facing
seat. The coachman cracked
his whip. The horses, heads
held high, livery polished and
gleaming in the early morn-ing
light, started their journey.
“He sprang to his sleigh,
to his team gave a whistle,
and away they all flew like the down of
a thistle. Now dash away! dash away!
dash away all!”
It would take hours to cover the route
on rutted roads, to wait for the Hell Gate
Ferry in numbing biting cold, and the final
muddy leg to their destination in Queens,
at a location described today as on Hazen
Street where Woodside and Astoria meet.
The mother held her drowsing son
close. He was born in difficult times dur-ing
the War for Independence. But now
peace was declared and a new nation
and a new people were taking the stage
to define a fresh identity. The old tradi-tion
of throwing one’s home open to the
rowdy crowds on Christmas was being
replaced by something new: the Holiday
was now an opportunity for families to
get together and share meals, gifts and
time together. This year they were going
to her husband’s cousins in Queens.
To numbed travelers, the house,
though old, was warm, inviting and full
of family. The yule log cracked in the fire.
Garlands of holly, ivy, mistletoe, and rose-mary
provided a pleasant holiday scent.
The stockings were hung by the chim-ney
with care in hopes that St. Nicholas
soon would be there.
Dinner was served at noon. The aroma
of food, which had been setting on the
table to cool for an hour, was mouth-watering.
Plates were passed, family style.
Desert included cakes, cookies, jellies and
plum pudding all downed with punch. After
the meal they sang carols including “The
First Noel,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-men,”
and “Joy to the World,” Games, such
as blind mans’ bluff, followed. Meanwhile,
the coachman, lost in his own thoughts
by the fire, smoked his pipe.
His eyes—how they twinkled! His
dimples, how merry! His cheeks were
like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll
little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and
the beard on his chin was as white as the
snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight
in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled
his head like a wreath.
After fun and frolic, everyone sat down
to a substantial supper – and a mighty
bowl of wassail. Winter days being short:
the sun was already kissing the horizon.
The little boy, exhausted by the festivities,
soon fell asleep on his mother’s breast
during the long ride home.
The children were nestled all snug in
their beds; While visions of sugar-plums
danced in their heads; the moon on the
breast of the new-fallen snow gave a
luster of midday to objects below,
That little boy never forgot that eve-ning.
Years later, as a parent, he wanted
to share its magic with his own children.
So Clement Clark Moore wrote ‘A Visit
from St. Nicholas’ making a Queens
Christmas the template for a nation.
