A Christmas Eve Mystery — Who Wrote that Poem?

My father grew up on a mining stake in the middle of an Arizona desert, called the Silver Bell, even though his father, a bit of a dreamer, was scratching for gold.  It was a tough life.  My father and his brother, the only children for miles, received their education from a series of young,  live-in teachers, who would be dropped off to spend a few months on the stake, before each fled, never to return.  My dad often commented that there were entire subjects he never heard of as a boy, because the young teachers simply did not have sufficient experience to teach them.  On the other hand, he was introduced to poetry early in life. 

While today, at age 90, my dad might forget my name, with a little prompting he still smiles as he recites stanzas from Charge of the Light Brigade” or “In Flanders Fields.”  He introduced me to poems early on as well, and “Twas the Night Before Christmas” (or “A Visit from St. Nicholas”)  was one of the first I learned. 

I was digging around for my childhood copy of the poem this year, and I came across a bit of a mystery.  It seems it isn’t completely resolved who wrote the poem, first published as the work of an “anonymous” author by a New York newspaper on December 23, 1823.  My dog-eared copy of an illustrated version shows Clement Moore as the author.  But in 2000, researchers questioned this attribution, pointing to Major Henry Livingston, Jr., as the more likely author.  That in turn sparked counter-evidence.

Either way, both my father and I, despite (or perhaps because of) growing up in arid lands, have special affection for the poem’s line, “The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, gave a lustre of midday to objects below.”  Wishing you that peaceful scene as well….