"A Visit from St. Nicholas" First Appeared in a Small-Town Newspaper

On December 23, 1823, a poem titled Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas ran anonymously in the Sentinel, the local newspaper of Troy, New York. Readers knew it instantly by its first line, and it has been a Christmas fixture ever since under the popular name The Night Before Christmas.

The verses did more than entertain. They fixed the modern picture of Santa Claus: a plump, twinkle-eyed “right jolly old elf” who flies through the night in a sleigh drawn by eight named reindeer and slides down the chimney to leave gifts. Many details we now take for granted as ancient tradition trace directly back to these lines.

Plump, jolly, and chimney-bound, Santa was largely written into being in a single newspaper column.

The author was unnamed for years. Clement Clarke Moore, a New York scholar, claimed the poem and included it in an 1844 collection, though the Livingston family later disputed his authorship. Whoever held the pen, the poem became one of the most reprinted works in American letters.