Tuesday, December 30, 2008 9:50 PM CST
Christmas poem has true meaning for family
By Bonnie Henry, Staff Writer
Without it, we would have no “right jolly old elf,” no Dancer, no Prancer, no stockings hung by the chimney with care.
It is, of course, the classic poem, “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas,” by Clement Moore.
Funny thing is, Moore was horrified to see his poem — intended for just his family — become part of the public domain.
“He was a man of letters, a writer,” says Dinghy Sharp, Moore’s great-great granddaughter. “He did not give it any credence.”
Ah, but she does. For almost a lifetime, Sharp, a former reading teacher now living in Green Valley, Ariz., has recited — never read — the poem to kids and adults alike.
“When I started as a teacher, there was this kindergarten teacher reading it in a sing-songy way,” says Sharp, 80. “I said, ‘Wait! You can’t do it that way.’ I got up and just emoted all over the place.”
Then, as now, she tells it exactly the way her own grandfather — Moore’s grandson — told it to her.
In 1936, 8-year-old Sharp and her family traveled from her hometown of Detroit to New York City to visit her grandfather for Christmas.
When they arrived at her grandfather’s Manhattan high-rise, he asked her, “Can I give you a gift?” And then he lifted her on his lap and recited the poem he, too, had heard as a child, as well as its history.
According to family lore, Moore, a professor who taught Greek, Latin and Hebrew, arrived early at his New York City home on Christmas Eve, 1822, only to be sent back out to buy the Christmas goose he’d forgotten.
On the way to market in his two-horse open sleigh, says Sharp, Moore encountered a heavy snowstorm.
“After the snow stopped, he saw the moon on the crest of the new-fallen snow,” says Sharp.
Along the way, he also saw a woodcutter named Jan-Peter delivering wood to the poorer people in town without asking for payment. “He really existed and he was really elfin,” says Sharp.
Jan-Peter, she adds, would also sit at a potbelly stove in the general store, telling stories to the children.
After he returned home, Moore, says Sharp, finished the poem that had probably been percolating in his head for some time — a poem to lift the spirits of his six children, especially 6-year-old daughter, Charity, who was ill with tuberculosis.
That Christmas, Moore recited his poem to his family. “Everyone loved it,” says Sharp, including cousin Harriet Butler. “She wrote it down in what they called a woman’s notebook.”
She also sent it to the Troy Sentinel, which published it at Christmas time in 1823. There was no authorship.
“Harriet was so excited to see it in print that she got in her little sleigh to show my great-great-grandfather,” says Sharp. “He was so angry he told her she could not come back for Christmas.”
But in 1844, the family convinced him to allow the poem, originally titled, “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas,” to be published under his name.
In 1862, one year before he died, Clement Moore penned the tale in a handwritten copy — one of several still in existence.
Besides that moonlit ride and Jan-Peter’s generosity, Moore also drew on the writings of close friend, Washington Irving, and his, “Knickerbocker’s History of New York.”
“Washington Irving told all the stories of the immigrants, how they celebrated the holidays,” says Sharp. “He told of Kriss Kringle.”
Moore even borrowed from a revised “Knickerbocker” that had a jolly old elf “laying his finger beside his nose.”
But it was he who came up with the eight tiny reindeer, says Sharp.
Later versions of Santa include Thomas Nast’s illustration for Harper’s Weekly, published in the Christmas season of 1862, as well as the roly-poly Santa created by Haddon Sundblom beginning in the 1930s for Coca-Cola ads.
“I have more than 300 Santas,” says Sharp, whose collection includes a Santa from Nigeria and one from Hawaii, complete with sun glasses.
A storyteller since she first heard Clement Moore’s tale, Sharp still loves sharing its wonder, especially with children.
“They always ask me two questions,” she says. “They ask, ‘Did Charity live?’ Yes she did, until the age of 37.
“And they ask me, ‘How did you learn it?’ “And I say, ‘I don’t know how. I just always have.’”
Contact Bonnie Henry at bhenry@azstarnet.com, or write to 3295 W. Ina Road, Suite 125, Tucson AZ 85741.
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Mama says wrote on Dec 26, 2008 6:33 AM:
Put me in the spirit of Christmas. "