[stylist] stylist Digest, Vol 80, Issue 13

[Kerry Thompson]

Hi friends,

As I told Robert, Priscilla's death came as a great shock to me, as 
apparently it did to everyone else here. May she rest in peace. She will 
certainly be missed.

Robert:

Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863) is generally 
considered to be the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas".

He was born on July 15, 1779 to Benjamin Moore and Charity Clarke.[1] 
Clement Clarke Moore was a graduate of Columbia College (1798), where he 
earned both his B.A. and his M.A..

In 1820, Moore helped Trinity Church organize a new parish church, St. 
Lukes in the Fields, on Hudson Street,[2] and the following year he was 
made professor of Biblical learning at the General Theological Seminary 
in New York, a post that he held until 1850. The ground on which the 
seminary now stands was his gift.[3]

 From 1840 to 1850, he was a board member of the New York Institution 
for the Blind at 34th Street and Ninth Avenue, which is now the New York 
Institute for Special Education. He compiled a Hebrew and English 
Lexicon (1809), and published a collection of poems (1844). Upon his 
death in 1863 at his summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island, his 
funeral was held in Trinity Church, Newport, where he had owned a pew. 
Then his body was interred in the cemetery at St. Luke in the Fields. On 
November 29, 1899, his body was reinterred in Trinity Churchyard 
Cemetery in New York.

...

The poem, "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an 
American",[5] was first published anonymously in the Troy, New York, 
Sentinel on December 23, 1823, and was reprinted frequently thereafter 
with no name attached. Moore later acknowledged authorship and the poem 
was included in an 1844 anthology of his works[6] at the insistence of 
his children, for whom he wrote it.

A Visit from St. Nicholas is largely responsible for the conception of 
Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today, including his 
physical appearance, the night of his visit, his mode of transportation, 
the number and names of his reindeer, and the tradition that he brings 
toys to children. Prior to the poem, American ideas about St. Nicholas 
and other Christmastide visitors varied considerably. The poem has 
influenced ideas about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus beyond the United 
States to the rest of the English-speaking world and beyond.

Moore's connection with the poem has been questioned by Professor Donald 
Foster, an expert on textual content analysis, who used external and 
internal evidence to argue that Moore could not have been the author.[7] 
Major Henry Livingston, Jr., a New Yorker with Dutch and Scottish roots, 
is considered the chief candidate for authorship, if Moore did not write 
it. Livingston was distantly related to Moore's wife.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Clarke_Moore

I don't know when Brits and Americans diverged in their Christmas 
salutation, but obviously after Moore's time. It would be interesting to 
find out, but I have no idea how to go about doing so.

Solidarity and Peace,
Kerry