102 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • DECEMBER 2018
REAR VIEW
CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE MR. SANTA CLAUS
By ANNIE WILKINSON
For nearly two centuries, Santa
Claus has been a plump, jovial,
good-hearted soul who travels
worldwide in a sleigh pulled high
above the rooftops by magical flying
reindeer. Each Christmas, when this
wise old elf flies over the Northeast,
perhaps he gives a nod to the Long
Island neighborhood where his iconic
image was said to have originated: the
Moore Homestead Playground, originally
called Elmhurst Playground.
Before Nassau County was formed
in 1899, that neighborhood, today’s
Elmhurst, was originally called
Newtown. The wealthy Moore
family had established their 1660s
farmhouse and acreage there. In 1779,
Clement Clarke Moore was born at
the family’s Chelsea estate; he spent
many Christmases in Elmurst, which
many historians believe it was the
setting for his classic 1822 poem A
Visit From St. Nicholas (popularly
known by its first line,’Twas the
Night Before Christmas). But while
readers praise the inventive revamp
of its central character, Moore’s own
character may not be as admirable as
that of his creation.
SANTA GETS A
MAKEOVER
Moore attended Columbia College
(now Columbia University) and
become a scholar of the literature
of the ancient Greeks and other
civilizations. The expert in Dutch
folklore mixed myth and reality to
come up with a memorable tale of
Santa Claus’ epic journey. The poem’s
merry, generous Santa was unlike
the real Saint Nicholas, the ancient
Christian bishop who told children
to live disciplined lives and gave only
occasional gifts.
On Christmas Eve in 1822, Moore
was going to buy a turkey to donate
to the poor. As he rode in a sleigh
through Greenwich Village’s
snow-covered streets, he began
writing a poem for his six children.
Some say his image of Santa Claus
was inspired by the sleigh’s bearded
driver, by a local Dutch tradesman, by
the first governor of New Netherland
(now New York and New Jersey), or
by Moore’s portly neighbor. Others
say that Moore’s black slave drove
the sleigh.
ROOFTOP PRANCERS
Those airborne reindeer pulling
Santa’s sleigh? In 1000 B.C.E. ancient
Mongolians carved hundreds of
gravestone images of flying hoofed
creatures. Greek mythology told of
leaping reindeer outrunning flying
arrows. The arctic indigenous Sami
shamans of Northern Scandinavia
and Eastern Russia imagined strong
creatures who coursed through the
skies. Flying goats pulled the Norse
god Thor’s sleigh.
Other modern-day observers speculate
that many of the poem’s concepts
(like the Dutch reindeer names) were
lifted from earlier work by Moore’s
friend Washington Irving. In 1809
in Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History
of New York, Irving wrote how St.
Nicholas advised a sage then “laying
his finger beside his nose, gave a very
significant look, then mounting his
wagon, he returned over the treetops
and disappeared.”
MAGICAL MYTH
A friend of the Moores sent the
poem to the Troy Sentinel newspaper.
It was published anonymously
in 1823; Moore did not claim credit
until 1837. He was seen as a grumpy
parent whose other poetry urged
his children to be humble and refuse
transient delights. Did he really pen
the light-hearted verse? He did not
publish it under his name until 1844,
wanting to be revered as the author
of a scholarly Hebrew dictionary.
Instead he became famous for a work
he referred to as a ‘trifle.”
A controversy erupted around
1900 when the descendants of Major
Henry Livingston Jr., a Dutch Hudson
Valley gentleman farmer and poet,
claimed that Livingston was the poet.
In 1919 the Dutchess County Historical
Society ruled that a comparing the
poem with Livingston’s verses “adds
internal evidence supporting the
correctness of the family’s position."
The truth? In 2000, the Encyclopaedia
Brittannica wrote that many
scholars concluded that computer
aided analysis “showed that it had
more in common with poetry written
by Livingston than with poetry by
Moore.”
Santa and his reindeer may never
reveal the truth about who really
invented them — but that won’t stop
children everywhere from reciting
“Now, Dasher! Now Dancer! Now
Prancer and Vixen!…”
Clement C. Moore