Who Really Wrote 'The Night Before Christmas'?
Some support her argument, such as MacDonald Jackson, a former English professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who even published a book about the controversy, Who Wrote the Night Before Christmas? Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore vs. Henry Livingston Question. Another academic, Vassar professor and forensic linguist Donald Foster, embraced Livingston as the author in his 2000 book Author Unknown, pushing the theory that the poem's language and style are quite different than Moore's other works. As The New York Times pointed out, "In other Christmas poems he admonished his own children to be humble, mindful of their mortality and aloof from transient pleasures."
Still others back the original author. University of Massachusetts History Professor Stephen Nissenbaum wrote an article in 2001 supporting Moore as the poem's creator. Manuscript dealer Seth Kaller, who owned a handwritten copy of the poem from Moore, sides with him and writes on his website that "a careful look at the evidence clearly supports Moore's authorship and completely discredits the Livingston camp."
The poem first appeared in the Troy Sentinel newspaper on Dec. 23, 1823 with no byline. People loved its description of old St. Nick and his Christmas Eve routine so much that it became part of Santa culture.
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