I vividly remember a Christmas when my daughter was just three—long before she could read. Every night she would toddle over to the bookshelf, grab “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, climb into my lap, and ask me to read it to her.

This routine went on for about a week. Then one night, she brought the book from her room and, as I began to read, she stopped me and said, “No, Daddy, I’ll read it to you.” To my amazement, she recited the entire poem—verbatim—turning the pages on cue at all the right moments. It was a magical moment and I was stunned that she had memorized the whole poem. 

A few days later—the verses were still rattlin’ around in my head like eight tiny reindeer prancing on the roof—so I did what any obsessed parent on a mission would do, I dove into the poems origins. And lo-n-behold, what did I discover? No one knows for sure who penned the little rune. Why, it’s a two-century-old whodunit! It’s a mystery that’s got scholars and sleuths in—well I hate to say it—a merry tizzy!

The original poem exploded upon the world anonymously on December 23, 1823, in the Troy Sentinel newspaper in Troy, New York. No byline. No author. Just twenty-eight perfect anapestic couplets that single-handedly invented the modern Santa Claus.

For you see, the old St. Nick—before the poem—was a tiny (elf size), thin, stern, scary looking bishop who gave bad kids a chunk of black coal, a switch or whipping, or if they were really vile—he kidnapped the baddie and stuffed ‘em into a sack for a ride to hell. Yes, a ride straight to hell. Good kids got a coin or a small piece of fruit. He was more judge, jury, and executioner than the jolly ol’ elf we know today.

The old St. Nick always rode a horse or donkey, never a sleigh pulled by reindeer. He never brought toys or filled stockings, he didn’t have a workshop, and he had a mean and scary sidekick—Krampus—who enjoyed thrashing bad kids. Plus, he always came on December 5-6, not Christmas Eve.

Pre-poem Christmas? Total chaos—it was a rowdy, boozy, adult oriented bash more like Mardi Gras on ice. Wassailing mobs staggered door to door demanding grub and grog. Generally speaking, it wasn’t a cozy family time of gift giving. 

Enter “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,”—it flipped the switch in eight dazzling ways:

1. It recast St. Nick as a “jolly ol’ elf.”
2. It invented eight tiny reindeer with zippy names.
3. It added a sleigh with daring rooftop landings.
4. It pioneered the magical chimney entrance method.
5. It transformed Santa into a magical gift giver—not a judge.
6. It nudged the date of his visit from December 5-6 to Christmas Eve.
7. It morphed the month long adult street party into a magical child-centered event.
8. Lastly, it turned St. Nick into an irresistible—twinkly-eyed old grandpa we all adore.

This timeless gem kicks off with that most famous of lines:

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

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

And the reindeer names? Unforgettable!

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

On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem!”

Whoa, hold the jingle bells—Dunder and Blixem? Shouldn’t it be Donner and Blitzen?

This discrepancy is more than just a case of your mistaken memory—it’s not some fuzzy holiday flub; it’s the spark that ignites a fiery, foot-stomping feud.  

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries the poem was widely attributed to Clement Clarke Moore—a wealthy New York biblical scholar, respected seminary professor, and donor of the land that became Greenwich Village. The original poem, published in 1823, named the last two reindeer “Dunder” and “Blixem”—Dutch words for “Thunder” and “Lightning.” Moore was not Dutch. Why would he use “Dunder” and “Blixem?” 

However, Henry Livingston Jr.—who many suggest authored the poem—was a prominent farmer, poet, and Revolutionary War soldier, was of Dutch descent and spoke the language. Decades later his family claimed he wrote the poem and read it to them as early as 1807. In addition, Livingston regularly sent pieces he had written to publishers anonymously. 

Keep in mind—Dutch was common in New York at the time, reflecting the region’s heritage and it is entirely possible Moore was familiar with the names, meaning, and usage—as they were often used as a form of expletive. However, while Moore was fluent in six languages, Dutch was not one of them. Scour his 60 plus years of writings, and you’ll find zero instances of Dutch words or phrases—except right here in this poem. 

But, Moore was fluent in German, often corresponded in German—sprinkling German terms in his letters and writings—and owned many scholarly books in German.

And that’s the real head-scratcher: if Clement Clarke Moore truly wrote the poem in 1823, why on earth would he reach for the Dutch “Dunder and Blixem” when the German “Donner and Blitzen” were sitting right there—words he actually knew, used often, and that rhymed far better?

Everything about Moore screams “go German,” not Dutch. Yet the original text is stubbornly, unmistakably Dutch. That single choice feels like a neon arrow pointing straight to a different author.

Fast forward 14 years to1837: Publisher Charles Fenno Hoffman includes the poem in “The New York Book of Poetry”—and for the first time credits Moore, with his permission. This publication of the poem changed Blixem to Blixen—possibly to rhyme better with Vixen—and Dunder to Donder—possibly to sound more English or maybe a correction of what either he or Moore thought to be a misspelling. History doesn’t tell us who actually made the changes.

We do know that when Moore claimed authorship in his 1844 collection “Poems”, he kept Donder and changed Blixen to Blitzen, pure German lightning. This version became the standard for decades. Over time, Donder morphed into “Donner,” making both names pure German—thunder and lightning. Again, nobody knows for sure who made the last switch, but the smart money says some editor who knew German assumed Donder was a bungled attempt at the German name, and “fixed” it to the now familiar “Donner and Blitzen.” A well-meaning correction….that quietly buried the poem’s Dutch heartbeat. Yet, the fact remains, Moore never once used “Donner” in any printing—it appeared only after his death.

In 1859, 15 years after Moore’s “Poems” were published, the children of Henry Livingston Jr. discovered Moore had taken the poem as his own and protested privately that their father was the real author. Livingston, who died in 1828, had allegedly been reciting the poem to his family as early as 1807. His children, along with a neighbor named Eliza—who later married into the family—recalled Livingston reading the poem aloud long before it was ever published. Hard proof? None. And unfortunately, Livingston’s papers were lost to a house fire after his death. 

Surprisingly, the Livingston family did not publicly contest Moore’s claim at the time—possibly because Moore held a prominent position in the Episcopal Church, and several members of the Livingston family were themselves clergy. It simmered behind the scenes until December 1899 when a descendant of Henry Livingston publicly challenged Moore’s authorship in a New York newspaper, “The Sun.” Fiery debates have been raging ever since. 

In the late 1990s the ground shifted. A Vassar English professor and literary detective named Don Foster—the same guy who unmasked Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors and helped the FBI catch the Unabomber through writing style—reignited the controversy when he turned his tools on the poem. What he found was explosive:

• The poem is written in almost pure anapestic tetrameter—da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM. Livingston wrote dozens of surviving poems in that exact bouncy meter. Twenty of them are virtually indistinguishable in rhythm, vocabulary, and playful spirit from “The Night Before Christmas.” On the other hand, Moore almost never wrote in anapestic meter. In his entire surviving output you can count the anapestic lines on one hand. 

• Lexical Fingerprinting: Foster cataloged and mapped “rare collocations” or unusual word pairings like “all through the house” or “laying his finger aside of his nose,” which echo Livingston’s whimsical verse but are absent in Moore’s stuffy poetic sermons.

• Phonetic Scrutiny: Early phonetic tallying of syllables showed the poem’s joyful lilt matching Livingston’s light-hearted ditties, not Moore’s preachy tone.

• The original 1823 printing calls the last two reindeer “Dunder and Blixem”—pure Hudson Valley Dutch for “Thunder and Lightning.” Moore was Anglican, English roots, zero whimsy. Livingston grew up speaking Dutch; his family still swore in it. Moore spoke several languages, including German, but not Dutch. 

New Zealand scholar MacDonald P. Jackson later doubled down on Foster’s findings after rigorously running the poem through his own set of tests, stating that “every test, so far applied, associates ‘The Night Before Christmas’ much more closely with Livingston’s verse than with Moore’s.” Jackson’s key metrics found the following: 

• Function Word Frequencies: Tracked 50+ common word connectors (“the,” “on,” “as,” “that,” “would”) and then the next 60 most used words. Livingston overuses “all” adverbially (“all through”); Moore favors abstracts. The poem aligns 80%+ with Livingston’s rates.

• Locutions and Syntax: Gems like “many a” or “in vain” pepper Livingston’s works but not Moore. Line starts with “And” (often comma-followed) appears 15x in the poem—Livingston’s habit, not Moore’s.

• Phoneme Analysis (Jackson’s Innovation): A novel test on sound transitions (tongue/lip movements in recitation). Jackson scored pairs like /s/ to /t/ (as in “snug… stockings”). Livingston’s verse flows 12% smoother in phonemic shifts; the poem matches this, explaining its “rollicking” read-aloud feel. Moore’s sounds are stiffer, suiting his preachy style.

• Overall Stats: Chi-square tests and cluster analysis grouped the poem with Livingston’s hits (The Way to Arcady) at p < 0.001 significance—these are slam-dunk stats for Livingston.

Still, not everyone agrees. In 2004, historian and manuscript collector Seth Kaller, who once owned one of Moore’s handwritten versions of the poem, publicly disputed Foster’s claims, offering a detailed point by point rebuttal. Additionally, there have been other computational push backs that show Moore as the more likely author. 

Our Final Thoughts

The argument for who wrote the poem will likely never be fully resolved. After reading some of Moore’s other works, I’d describe them as scholarly, solemn, and steeped in moral and religious instruction—dry theological treatises, earnest poetry that preaches duty and piety, and utterly lacking in the playful bounce and whimsy of “Twas the Night before Christmas.” After wading through the mountain of Moore’s writings—stiff and relentlessly moral—it’s hard to believe he wrote the poem. Then again—in a moment of inspiration, maybe he did.

Or…..maybe Moore honestly believed it was his by the 1840s—by then he had made 21 changes across the 56-line poem. Including minor word substitutions for clarity or flow, syntax adjustments, and lexical updates—but the forensic evidence of meter, word choice, tone, and cultural fingerprints appears overwhelming. The poem feels like it danced out of a merry Dutch farmhouse in Poughkeepsie, not a somber Chelsea mansion filled with religious works.

And yet… every December the debate fades under the wonder of twinkling lights. The poem belongs to no one—and to all of us now. My three-year-old sorceress didn’t care who wrote it; she only cared that jolly ol’ St. Nick was on his way. 

So whoever you thank—Major Henry Livingston Jr., the ghost of a laughing Dutchman, or Clement Clark Moore, the stern professor who carried the torch—just promise me one thing:

When you get to the lines, 

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

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself…”

Laugh out loud. I still do, in spite of myself. Every single time.

Ho! Ho! Ho!