Classic poem inspires new tome: 'Twas the Night' expertly analyzed, including NNY connection

Dec. 25—It maybe didn't equal time-honored "visions of sugar-plums," but Constableville historian Peter R. Hayes was amazed when he received a copy of the scholarly and lavishly illustrated, "Twas the Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem."

The 11 1/4 x 8 1/2 -inch hardcover book was released in September to mark two bicentennial milestones: one this year and one in 2023. The poem, it's believed, was first recited at the home of Clement Clark Moore on the outskirts of Manhattan in 1822. A year later, it was published anonymously by the Troy Sentinel.

The book honoring "Twas the Night" was a labor of love, 10 years in the making, for author Pamela McColl of Vancouver. She calls the poem, originally titled, "Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas" — a masterpiece of juvenile fiction and "the most often read, recited, reprinted and collected work in the library of English literature."

The amazement that Mr. Hayes shared when he received the book has been the reaction of others. According to a publicity blurb, storyteller David Paul Kirkpatrick, former president of production at Walt Disney Pictures and former president of Paramount Pictures, opined: "For the very first time, the poem's own story is presented. It's a luscious, entertaining tome."

But initial reaction of the book from those who have not seen it, may be what Mr. Hayes came across when, after he received it, a relative asked him: "How on Earth can you write a 260-page book on a kids' poem?"

Mr. Hayes, a trustee at historic Constable Hall, in his talk with a reporter, would answer that question. But for another answer, one must meet Ms. McColl, and over the past several months, many people have done that as she travels to North American cities, to museums, libraries, book stores and historical sites spreading the word about her book and the magic of the timeless poem.

"I've been to a different city every day for 21 nights," Ms. McColl said on Dec. 2, shortly after she drove up in her rental Jeep Cherokee to The Little Bookstore at the Washington Street Plaza in Watertown, where store owner Rebecca A. Kinnie hosted a "Twas the Night" signing.

Ms. McColl had been to the New England area, in cities such as Boston, with other stops in The Berkshires before navigating over to Watertown. On Saturday, Dec. 3, she stopped at Clayton's Little Book Store, and on Dec. 4, she presented a talk at Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, where, in addition to reading to children, she outlined the way Christmas literature and art has developed over the past two centuries and the influence "Twas the Night" has had on great works of art by the likes of N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell.

Ms. McColl said her new book is the first to dig deep into the history and heritage of "Twas the Night," which legend goes, has connections to the north country.

"It's the most famous poem ever written," Ms. McColl said. "And it's the poem that created Christmas Eve, which people all over the world celebrate in this style."

That style? The poem has references to children, "nestled all snug in their beds," the "moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow," "a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer" and what the author imagines hearing on the roof — the "prancing and pawing of each little hoof."

"It doesn't matter what faith you follow," Ms. McColl said. "Christmas Eve is Santa, the elf, coming down the chimney bringing presents."

Meanwhile, the folklore of the poem has been a gift to the north country.

The connection

For Mr. Hayes, Constable Hall, 5909 John St., Constableville, is to the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas" as what Cooperstown is to baseball.

"Baseball wasn't invented there," he said of the Otsego County village. "But you feel it could have been invented in Cooperstown. It has that connection."

Constable Hall, a Federal-style limestone, was built in the likes of an English manor by William Constable Jr. and completed in 1819. The senior Constable was a wealthy New York City merchant who owned 3.8 million acres of Northern New York and was responsible for beginning the development of a wide swath of the north country.

Several generations of the Constable family lived at the Hall until it was sold in 1947. By 1949 it was restored as a house museum and opened to the public for tours and event usage.

The mistress of the Hall, Mary Eliza McVickar Constable (1789-1870), now resting at St. Paul's Cemetery, Constableville, was a cousin of Clement C. Moore. William C. Constable, her husband, died in 1821 at the age of 36 and she lived at the Hall for parts of the next 40 years.

Questionable lore has it that the poem was given as a gift for Mary Eliza's five young children. In 1822, the year the poem was written, she was a young, recently widowed mother facing the task of raising her family on her own.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Mr. Moore called upon his recently widowed cousin in 1821 or 1822, or that he visited during construction from 1810 to 1819.

Mr. Moore was a resident of the Chelsea section of New York City.

"The north country was upstate, but it wasn't in the middle of the woods," Mr. Hayes said. "The New York City branches of these families — the Constables, McVickars and Moores were well aware that there were several people living up in, what they referred to as Turin."

Mary Eliza, Mr. Hayes said, had two brothers living in this area, with last name McVickar. One lived in Constableville and the other in Collinsville.

"We know maybe Mary Eliza McVickar, newly widowed with five young children, is up in Constable Hall, and she doesn't know what to do with her life because her husband died in an accident without a will," Mr. Hayes said. "There's no diary. We don't know exactly what was going on through her mind. But you can use common sense and say it was, "Now, what do I do?'"

Mr. Hayes said that "without a doubt" there were family visitors who went up to see Mary Eliza and her two brothers. Susan Moore, related through the Constables, made a sketch of the hall in the 1820s that visitors can view at the building. Also on display is a chess set the Constable family has said was a gift from Clement.

"Did Clement ever come?" Mr. Hayes asked. "Or maybe he just heard about it. Maybe he sent (the poem) as a present to Mary Eliza. Maybe he wrote it for his own kids. To him, it was just a throw-away. That's the best anyone knows. It was a kids poem he wrote for his own kids. But maybe he sent a copy to Constableville. Or, maybe it was like, 'I'm going to up to see Mary Eliza. Maybe I should take this little poem for her.'"

a tangible connection

The bottom line, Mr. Hayes said, is that there's no hard evidence of Clement C. Moore visiting Constable Hall.

"We're trying to find some letter that references Clement Moore's visit to this area," he said. "His diaries don't exist and there's a lot of primary material missing."

But also missing and erased from memory is the New York City home that Clement once lived in. It stood on what is now the corner of 23rd and 9th Avenue, and was pushed into oblivion as the city grew in the 19th century.

But Constable Hall remains, offering something tangible relating to the era of when "Twas the Night" was written, thus its attraction relative to the poem.

"It's a place where you can tangibly imagine a kind of Hallmark story, if you will," Mr. Hayes said.

"There's no Clement Moore museum," Ms. McColl said. "So if you want to get a real sense of the time and period, that home is a great place to stand."

The author said Clement "was possibly" in a room at the hall, reading to Eliza's children.

"He could have written it there. It's possible," she said. "And it's a great way to sense the era."

Constable Hall's bedrooms are furnished with large wooden shutters that open from within. According to Times files, the hall's architect apparently modeled them after a design conceived by Thomas Jefferson. The shutters acted as storm windows that kept in heat from the mansion's many fireplaces.

Did those windows inspire the lines?:

"Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash."

Did the author, with the five children of the hall all "nestled all snug in their beds," one brilliant and brisk Lewis County winter evening, tear open those shutters and, looking out upon the darkness, witness an eye-opening scene?:

"The moon on the breast of new fallen snow

Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below."

The author's vision

Ms. McColl devotes a chapter to the life of Clement C. Moore, with meticulous details. She notes that he married the daughter of William Taylor, Lord Chief Justice of Jamaica, West Indies. Clement was 34 and Catherine Taylor was 19 at the time. "Her friends wondered why such a lovely maiden should select for her husband a student, a bookworm, and a man considerably older than herself," Ms. McColl writes.

In response, the author republished a poem written by Catherine Taylor, explaining her attraction to the "poetic soul."

According to published reports, Mr. Moore based his poem on a Dutch folk tale he heard as a child. His vision of St. Nicholas may have been inspired by a portly Dutchman in his Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.

His description of a smoke-wreathed Santa also may have been borrowed in part from the popular American author Washington Irving, who in 1809 portrayed St. Nicholas as a jolly Dutchman who puffed on a long pipe.

The spark for the famous poem may have involved turkeys.

According to an uncredited story in the files of the Watertown Daily Times from 1944, Clement's wife "was making up baskets for the poor for Trinity Parish that (1822) Christmas Eve when she discovered she didn't have enough turkeys. She coaxed the professor (Clement) from his library and sent him to the store to get more."

Apparently, Clement Moore, on his turkey sortie, passed "Christmas Eve dress — snow and moonlight. The cheeriness of the crowds in the streets and everything warmed up the usually aloof 43-year-old scholar."

He then "had a vision of Christmas as all children see it, and a poem about it formed in his mind. When he reached home, he wrote down the lines and read them that evening to his seven children."

The clipping notes that Clement had no inclination to share the poem. "But it so happened that a young relative, Sarah Harriet Butler, visiting the Moores that Christmas, diligently put a copy in her diary, and read it to her father, the Rev. David Butler, when she returned to her home in Troy."

Allegedly, Clement had initial embarrassment and anger over its publication. His real literary work was that of a classical and biblical scholar; he was the author of a Hebrew and English lexicon and a professor of Hebrew and Greek at the Protestant Episcopal Seminary in New York.

He was reportedly angered by its publication and adamantly refused to take credit as the author of the anonymous work.

"He at last bowed to pressure from family and friends in 1837, when the poem first appeared with his name attached as author," according to a 1990 story from the files of the Times.

a vision takes flight

The poem created an entirely new art form which Ms. McColl, with encyclopedic flair, depicts in her new book: depictions of the Christmas Eve visitor from the North Pole. Children, with the help of various artists who read the poem, now had an idea how to envision Santa Claus. In compiling information for her book, Ms. McColl accessed art collections in archives across North America.

"They are historically significant pictures," Mr. Hayes said. "That requires somebody who really understands the history of it. It's a very well curated selection."

Ms. McColl also includes dozens of literary excerpts to explain the poems cultural history, featuring individuals and events — in total "a 264-page footnote" that has made "Twas the Night" a classic.

Ms. McColl also explores the origins of Christmas itself in her book, from "Pope Julius I, Bishop of Rome from 337 to 352, who is credited with declaring Christmas Day — and the date of the birth of Jesus Christ" to referencing an article in the December 2016 issue of the psychiatry journal The Lancet, titled, "A Wonderful Lie," with "researchers arguing that the Santa Claus story leads to distrust in the parent child relationship, and that the morality of making children believe in such myths should be questioned."

She also references a rebuttal to that view in her book from child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg: "For many families, the excitement of leaving stuff out for Santa, watching through the window at night, they're just lovely traditions."

All of those elements cited by the psychologist were captured in "Twas the Night."

"It's the magic of the work," Ms. McColl said at her Watertown book-signing. "It's kind of like Jiminy Cricket sitting on a rock, wishing upon a star. It's hope. It's positivity. It represents faith, things beyond ourselves. It represents a lot."

"There are lots of layers, and it's a poem near and dear to peoples' hearts," Mr. Hayes said. "I like it because it's tied to the north country. It helps tie the north country's history to the wider history of the nation."

The details

WHAT: "Twas the Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem," self-published by Pamela McColl through Grafton and Scratch.

SYNOPSIS: "For the very first time the poem's own story is presented. It is a fascinating story that spans centuries, beginning in the days of the Roman Empire and culminating in the modern era. Hundreds of vintage illustrations and spectacular works of art are accompanied by in-depth commentary that brings the poem to life as never before."

A CRITIC'S VIEW: It's "packed full of vintage illustrations and lesser known historical details that make the book a bundle of perennial joy, for believers and non-believers alike." — IndieReader —COST: $36.

AVAILABLE: Copies are available at The Little Book Store locations in Watertown and Clayton. It's also available at online retailers.

OF NOTE: Ms. McColl is also the author of a 2012 version of "Twas the Night," which removed references of a tobacco-smoking Santa. The book gained national attention and created much debate.