The Battle for Christmas

by Stephen Nissenbaum

  Manhattan in 1778. When this map was drawn, New York City occupied only the lower tip of Manhattan (the shaded area at the bottom). The rest of the island was rural. Halfway up the map, on the left, is an estate labeled “Clarke”—the property of Thomas Clarke, Moore’s maternal grandfather. He called it Chelsea, after a district in London. (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society)

  Manhattan in 1831. Now Moore’s Chelsea estate has been divided up into gridded urban terrain. Moore’s property, located near the lower right-hand corner of the map, extended from Eighth Avenue to Tenth Avenue, between Eighteenth and Twenty-fourth streets. (Note that on this map the more usual north-south orientation has been reversed; the southern part of the island is at the top.) (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society)

  1810 St. Nicholas. The broadside that John Pintard commissioned at his own expense, executed by the noted illustrator Alexander Anderson. In the right-hand panel are two children: a pleased little girl who has received a present and a tearful little boy who has not (perhaps he has received a caning instead). John Pintard confirmed the reverential image in a short poem placed beneath the picture: a child’s poem that begins with the words “Saint Nicholas, good holy man” and concludes: “Saint Nicholas, my dear good friend! / To serve you ever was my end. / If you will now, me, something give, / I’ll serve you ever while I live.” (Courtesy, The New-York Historical Society)

  FROM ST. NICHOLAS TO SANTA CLAUS

  It was at this difficult juncture, in 1822, that Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” As we already know, Moore did not invent “the night before Christmas” out of whole cloth. In the distant background was the old Dutch ritual, and John Pintard and Washington Irving offered more immediate models. In addition, three other poems, two from 1810 and the third from 1821, would provide more materials—for example, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer, and even the poetic meter that Moore would employ. Moore’s own contributions may have been small, but they were crucial to the creation of a myth that suited the needs of his own Knickerbocker set—and that finally proved malleable enough to transcend those needs and to be appropriated by other groups of Americans. It is time to examine more closely the sources Moore had at his disposal.

  First: Washington Irving. Yes, there were twenty-five references to St. Nicholas in Knickerbockers History. But Irving represented St. Nicholas not as a figure who appeared during the Christmas season but rather in the way that John Pintard had originally introduced him to the New-York Historical Society—that is, as the mythic patron saint of New Amsterdam. Early in Knickerbockers History, Irving wrote that “the great and good St. Nicholas … took … New Amsterdam under his peculiar patronage, and has ever since been … the titular saint of this excellent city.” In this role St. Nicholas (he never actually appears, except once in a dream scene and, again, as the wooden figurehead on a ship) was essentially an amusing caricature of the old-time Dutch gentry who inhabited Irving’s imaginary New Amsterdam: a genial yet obviously patrician saint, dressed in a broad hat and invariably smoking a long pipe.45 (Moore would later pick that up, but with one difference.)

  Next: The 1810 broadside picture that John Pintard commissioned—together with the verse that accompanied it—also influenced Moore; then the two anonymous poems, one from 1810 and the other from 1821. In all of these writings the pipe disappeared, and so did the satire, but St. Nicholas himself finally became a figure who distributed gifts to children during the Christmas season. Still, in all these sources the saint was very much a figure of majesty and authority—or at least of benevolent, kindly dignity. (The real St. Nicholas, if he existed at all, was an actual bishop, and in any case he was an official saint—the real patron saint of both Russia and Greece.) As a bishop, St. Nicholas was the direct representative of God and a figure of great authority as well as great charity. So it is not surprising that John Pintard would wish him to be represented in such a “serious” fashion in the broadside he commissioned, and not (as Washington Irving had irreverently done) as a humorous figure.

  In this illustration St. Nicholas has come not just to reward but also to punish. He is a figure of authority: We see him with his halo, ecclesiastical robes, and bishop’s scepter. St. Nicholas retained that air of authority in a poem that appeared in a New York newspaper just two weeks after Pintard’s broadside. This poem, essentially a longer, more elaborate version of Pintard’s, opens in a similar fashion, with a child hailing St. Nicholas—this time not in awkward iambic but in a more tripping meter—in fact, the exact meter that Moore would employ twelve years later, anapestic tetrameter. It opens: “Oh good holy man! whom we Sánete Claus name, / The Nursery forever your praise shall proclaim.” The poem goes on to catalogue the presents St. Nicholas might be expected to leave, followed by a “prayer” that St. Nicholas not come for the purpose of punishment (“[I] fin your hurry one thing you mislay, / Let that be the Rod—and oh! keep it away”) And it concludes with a promise of future good behavior:

  Then holy St. Nicholas! all the year,

  Our books we will love and our parents revere,

  From naughty behavior we’ll always refrain,

  In hopes that you’ll come and reward us again.

  The pattern of authority and judgment holds even in the poem that was Clement Moore’s most immediate source. Published in 1821, only a year before Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” this poem appeared as a little illustrated book called The Children’s Friend. Here, for the first time, we even find St. Nicholas appearing not on December 6 but on Christmas Eve; and we also find him traveling on a sleigh that is pulled by a reindeer—a single reindeer. But he is still a bishop (a “child’s bishop,” perhaps), a figure who metes out punishments along with rewards, and whose visit is designed to inspire anxiety along with hope:

  Old SANTECLAUS with much delight

  His reindeer drives this frosty night,

  O’er chimneytops, and tracks of snow,

  To bring his yearly gifts to you.

  The steady friend of virtuous youth,

  The friend of duty, and of truth,

  Each Christmas eve he joys to come

  Where love and peace have made their home.

  Through many houses he has been,

  And various beds and stockings seen,

  Some, white as snow, and neatly mended,

  Others, that seem’d for pigs intended.

  Where e’er I found good girls or boys,

  That hated quarrels, strife and noise,

  I left an apple, or a tart,

  Or wooden gun, or painted cart;

  To some I gave a pretty doll,

  To some a peg-top, or a ball;

  No crackers, cannons, squibs, or rockets,

  To blow their eyes up, or their pockets.

  No drums to stun their Mother’s ear,

  Nor swords to make their sisters fear;

  But pretty books to store their mind.

  With Knowledge of each various kind.

  But where I found the children naughty,

  In manners rude, in temper haughty,

  Thankless to parents, liars, swearers,

  Boxers, or cheats, or base tale-bearers,

  I left a long, black, birchen rod,

  Such, as the dread command of GOD

  Directs a Parent’s hand to use

  When virtue’s path his sons refuse.46

  This kind of Christmas can be thought of as a mini-version of the Day of Judgment. Insofar as the history of gift-giving on St. Nicholas Day can be traced to Europe, it is this kind of judgmental ritual that seems to have been involved. It can be seen in a seventeenth-century painting, St. Nicholas’s Day, by the Dutch painter Jan Steen, in which there appear both presents and punishments. Even today, something of this notion still lingers in the American celebration of Christmas, as, for example, in the song that begins “You’d better watch out… Santa Claus is coming to town,” and continues: “He knows if you’ve been sleeping, he knows if you’re
awake; he knows if you’ve been bad or good—so be good for goodness’ sake!”

  1821 St. Nicholas (from The Children’s Friend). This St. Nicholas is more benevolent-looking than John Pintard’s (and the label “Sante Claus” appears at the base of his hat), but he still holds a bishop’s scepter. Each verse of this charming book was similarly accompanied by an illustration—in color. (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society)

  To be sure, this kind of Christmas ritual was designed largely for children, while Judgment Day was for adults. Christmas took place once a year, Judgment Day once an eternity. The “judge” at Christmas was St. Nicholas; on Judgment Day it was God himself. And both the rewards and the punishments meted out on Christmas—a cookie on the one hand, or a birch rod on the other—were far less weighty than those of eternal joy or eternal damnation. But the parallel was always there, and always meant to be there. Christmas was a child’s version of Judgment Day, and its ambiguous prospects of reward or punishment (like those of Judgment Day itself) were a means of regulating children’s behavior—and preparing them for the greater judgment that was to come. Indeed, The Children’s

  Jan Steen, “Hes feest van Saint Nicholaas” (1666). Note the smiling little girl holding her present in the foreground and the tearful boy on the left—he is being mocked by the other children. The girl’s present is a doll that represents one of the saints, which suggests that this prosperous family is Roman Catholic. The St. Nicholas ritual did not cross the Atlantic; one reason may have been that it was performed by Holland’s Catholic community, while the Dutch immigration to New Netherlands was largely Protestant—and Dutch Protestants, much like the English Puritans, tried to suppress such practices as the celebration of saints’ days (as well as the use of icons like the little girl’s present). (Courtesy, Rijksmuseum-Stichting, Amsterdam)

  Friend even speaks of the birch rod as a product of “the dread command of GOD.”

  FROM THE DAY OF DOOM TO THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  The threat of judgment was gone the next year, when Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Moore’s St. Nicholas, as we all know, leaves only presents and goodwill, and he makes no threats—not even gentle ones. There is no warning of the birch rod, no hints about messy rooms or bad behavior. There is no stick to join the carrot. There is no little Day of Judgment. There is only a “happy Christmas to all.”

  This shift is all the more striking because the structure of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (unlike that of its immediate sources) parallels the structure of a seventeenth-century American poem about the real Judgment Day. That poem, written by Massachusetts clergyman Michael Wigglesworth, was published in 1662 with the title “The Day of Doom.” It was nearly as popular in its own time as “A Visit from St. Nicholas” is today, and it retained its popularity into the early nineteenth century.

  Both poems begin with a scene in which people are sleeping serenely on a still night, dreaming of good things to come. It is “the night before Christmas” in the one case, “the evening before [Doomsday]” in the other:

  Still was the night, Serene and Bright, when all Men sleeping lay;

  Calm was the season, and carnal reason thought so ’twould last for ay.

  Soul, take thine ease, let sorrow cease, much good thou hast in store:

  This was their Song … the Evening before.

  Virgins unwise … had closed their eyes …

  Yea, and the wise through sloth and frailty slumbered.

  ’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 sugarplums danced in their heads;

  And mama in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

  Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

  Then, suddenly, the slumbering calm is shattered by a sound that rouses the sleepers, causing them to leap out of bed and run to the window:

  For at midnight brake forth a Light, which turn’d the night to day,

  And speedily an hideous cry did all the world dismay.

  Sinners awake, their hearts do ache, trembling their loins surprizeth;

  Amazed with fear, by what they hear each one of them ariseth.

  They rush from Beds with giddy heads, and to their windows run,

  When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

  I sprang from my 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.

  At the window they witness the arrival through the air of an unexpected supernatural visitor, accompanied by other magical creatures:

  Viewing this light, which shines more bright than doth the Noonday Sun.

  Straightway appears (they see’t with tears) the Son of God most dread;

  Who with his Train comes on amain to Judge both Quick and Dead.

  His winged Hosts flie through all coasts, together gathering

  Both good and bad, both quick and dead, and all to Judgment bring.

  The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

  Gave a luster of midday 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….

  These parallels make the contrasts between the two poems all the more acute. In “The Day of Doom,” the supernatural visitor has come as a pitiless judge; he causes everyone to come before his “throne,” to separate those who can look forward to eternal happiness from those who are filled with the “dreadful expectation” of “endless pains and scalding flames.” In “A Visit from St. Nicholas” he is a jolly fellow who reassures his startled company that they have “nothing to dread,” and who departs from the house wishing happiness “to all.”

  I am not sure whether Moore read “The Day of Doom.” But so close are the parallels between the two poems that it is difficult to avoid speculating that the one was written with the other somewhere in mind. If so, then “The Day of Doom” constitutes another source of “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

  What Moore has evoked, in any case, is Christmas without the prospect of judgment. Without such a prospect, St. Nicholas himself loses his authority—indeed, he loses his very identity as a bishop. And Moore’s lengthy physical description of St. Nicholas reinforces the point (such a description is not to be found in any of Moore’s sources, but here it takes up four of the poems fourteen stanzas): Santa’s eyes “twinkle,” his cheeks are “rosy,” his dimples “merry,” his mouth is “droll,” his figure “chubby and plump,” his manner “jolly.” He is tiny—the size of an “elf.” His appearance and manner actually cause the narrator to laugh out loud “in spite of [him]self.”

  In every possible way, then, Moore’s St. Nicholas has lost his authority, his majesty, even his patrician dignity. He carries no bishop’s scepter. He is clothed not in a bishop’s red robes (despite the illustrations we may recall from modern editions of the poem) but in ordinary fur. This St. Nicholas is no bishop at all. He has effectively been defrocked.

  But not only has Moore defrocked St. Nicholas, he has declassed him, too. It is not only his authority that has vanished; his gentility is gone as well. Consider how St. Nicholas is pictured in the first illustrated edition of Moore’s poem, dating from 1848 (and probably issued with Moore’s approval). He looks like a plebeian, and that’s also how he is described in the text. Remember that Moore says “he looked like a pedlar”—“a pedlar just opening his pack”—something, that is, between a beggar and a petty tradesman.


  THE STUMP OF A PIPE

  And he smokes “the stump of a pipe.” Now, that little detail comes directly from Washington Irving—and from none of Moore’s other sources. Irving invariably associated St. Nicholas with a pipe. But there was a difference: That pipe was always referred to as a long pipe (indeed, flamboyantly long—in Irvings word, a “mighty” pipe).

  It is necessary to say something here about the history and politics of pipes, if only because Irving himself does so. Indeed, there is a chapter in Knickerbockers History that bears the title “Of the Pipe Plot.” This chapter has nothing to do with St. Nicholas; what it deals with is the moment at which New Amsterdam (that is, New York) was transformed from a community characterized by “ease, tranquillity, and sobriety of deportment” into “a meddlesome and factious” city. Irving associated this transformation with the Jeffersonian revolution of 1800, the same political upheaval in which “the mob, since called the sovereign people … exhibited a strange desire of governing itself.” What happened, Irving reported, was that the citizens of New York organized themselves, for the first time, into two opposing parties. The terms Irving chose to identify these parties are intriguing: “[T]he more wealthy and important… formed a kind of aristocracy, which went by the appellation Long Pipes, while the lower orders … were branded with the plebeian name of Short Pipes.”47