'THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS " by Clement Clarke Moore

Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings from the Ocean State not Oceana..

http://www.christmas-tree.com/stories/nightbeforechristmas.html
"THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
by Clement Clarke Moore


'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;



The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;


The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,


But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.


And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

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 of 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;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.


But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.""

Good Will to All

to us!

..What a wonderful world it would be."

I like the Elvis version

CUZ Elvis is everywhere

he wrote "A visit from saint nicholas" which is frequently mistitled as "the night before christmas"

sorry, i had to say it :evilgrin:

Merry Christmas :hi:

of another author.

Moore wrote dour, sermonizing work. None of his other work even remotely resembled the Christmas piece.

I shall google to try and find the name of the true author... whose style and word choice matches exactly.

The Elizabethan scholar from Vassar College who unmasked Joe Klein as the "Anonymous" who wrote Primary Colors now shakes up Yuletide verse with a reattribution of "A Visit from St. Nicholas." The selected cases of literary detection that lead up to this final surprise are the scholarly equivalent of FBI psychological profiler John Douglas's Mindhunter. Foster's textual forensics have put "A Funeral Elegy" by "W.S." into the Shakespeare canon and helped put Unabomber Ted Kaczynski in prison. His accounts of his high-profile roles in transatlantic Shakespearean squabbles and journalistic whodunits are both personable and page-turning. Whether it's because the statistical side of Foster's methodology is rather technical or that his critics have dismissed him as a "professor with a computer program," he mostly sticks to describing the fingerprints of word choice and telltale punctuation rather than lexical databases and verbal probabilities. In his case for a Scots-Dutch Revolutionary War major, Henry Livingston Jr., as the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and against puritan Manhattan professor Clement Moore, to whom it is traditionally attributed, he argues from not only lively biographic inference but also such small, telling details as the adverbial use of "all" and the Scottish origins of "snug." While lexiphiles will enjoy such minutiae, any book lover can savor the irony of how an Elizabethan elegy eventually put a literary scholar on the trail of a serial murderer.

n 1859 and 1862, Henry's descendants discovered that Moore was claiming credit for what they insisted was their ancestor's poem. The issue incensed them but Moore held a prominent position within the church seminary and the matter was silenced. Further attempts were made in 1899 and in 1920 but it wasn't until 2000 that Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, utilising original documentation, allegedly irrefutably demonstrated that Moore could not have been the author of that poem. It was, he stated, most likely to be the work of Major Henry Livingston, Jr.

and to all a good night! :hi:

Mz Pip
:dem:

:)

a family christmas tradition for me was that our dad would read the poem to us (from an OLD book that was from his family, the pictures are still locked firmly in my memory) on christmas eve while we sipped hot chocolate and then we'd hang up our stockings and go to bed.

a happy christmas to all!

son 7
daughter 18
and wife who LOVES Christmas

Just attended Mass together

Wish it would snow BUT its about 50 degrees

PEACE on Earth

Lovely!..brought back memories of my girls when they were little, and every Chritmas Eve I would read this to them...as my Mother had done for me....'twas a very different and kinder world!

Warm Christmas Wishes from Sunny San Diego!..we go dashing throught the sand.....

kids just read it to us while we sat on couch and held hands


Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night..

now about 33 degrees

VERY CLEAR