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New Brunswick has an interesting footnote in what the New York Times Book Review has called the most “reprinted, recited and learned by heart” American poem of all time. 

You will certainly recognize this poem by its iconic first lines:

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

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

According to the Telegraph-Journal’s Alan White in 1996, “as the story goes in Fredericton, Mr. Moore sent a handwritten copy of his poem to his godfather’s family the year after he wrote it, making Fredericton one of the first places A Visit From St. Nicholas was ever recited.”

The poem we probably now know as T’was The Night Before Christmas was originally called A Visit From Saint Nicholas and considering how well we all know the words, its authorship and publication is surprisingly complicated.

It is usually attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, a Professor of Greek and Latin Language at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Moore’s other works were typically distinctly more academic. For example he penned a hefty magnum opus on the finer details of the linguistic history of the Hebrew language.

While this didn’t exactly make him a bestselling author, it did attract the attention of a New Brunswicker who was a well known writer in his own right, but whose political opinions could not be further apart from Moore’s.

Jonathan Odell had lived in New Jersey before the American Revolution erupted. While Moore was deeply involved in American politics, during the Revolution Odell had been on the other side of that conflict as a high profile pro-British propagandist, penning lengthy and vitriolic anti-American manifestos.

When that war began to turn against the British, Odell was hauled before an American tribunal in New Jersey and was imprisoned for his anti-American writings. He escaped custody with the aid of local sympathizers, fleeing to New Brunswick.

While Odell is perhaps largely forgotten today in New Brunswick today –all of his works are currently out of print– he seems to remain a rather infamous figure to Americans. For example he is a main character in the hit 1955 Hollywood film ‘The Scarlet Coat,’ which depicts him as an intelligent but cynical British spymaster.

After settling in Fredericton in 1784, Odell established himself as a leading literary figure in the brand new province. According to Janice Innis of  St. Thomas University, “Odell wrote about New Brunswick from the perspective of an observer, since he was not native to the area.”

Odell was impressed with Moore’s book on Hebrew linguistics, and the two corresponded at length about its finer details. However the two men had actually known each other before the war. Jonathan Odell had been friends with Clement Clark Moore’s father, and was actually Moore’s godfather.

In the midst of their otherwise academic correspondence is found a copy of a poem that Clement Clarke Moore had written for his young children, called A Visit From St. Nicholas. 

Historian Ruby Cusack claimed to have discovered the poem in the Odell Papers collection of the Archives and Research Library at the New Brunswick Museum.

Cusack was surprised by the discovery, because she knew the poem well. She recalled in an article for the Telegraph-Journal how when she herself had been a little girl her mother had read her the story. As her mother read it her grandmother interred the room: “Gram picked up my book and remarked, “I memorized this poem in 1890 when I was 10 years old and I can still recite it.” ”

Around the time Moore sent a copy of the poem to Odell, it had first been published anonymously in a small local newspaper in New York State. 

This was not, however, Moore’s doing – it had been sent in by a friend of his. It’s not entirely clear that Moore was aware that his friend had sent his poem to the newspaper, nor is it clear he had ever intended for it to be published.

Nonetheless, the poem quickly took on a life of its own, and was reprinted in other newspapers on Christmas Eve in the following years.

It would introduce a more modern Santa Claus to popular culture. 

Before the poem Santa had a considerably less prominent role in Christmas, and was usually depicted as wearing a Catholic Bishop’s robe. St. Nicholas was, after all, a bishop in 4th century Myra, who, the stories went, rode through the sky in a sled pulled by a single horse every year on December 4th to deliver presents to children.

Intriguingly, in Moore’s poem St. Nicholas sounds an awful lot like the elderly gardener who tended to the estate he and his children lived in. According to New York writer Hugh Mulligan, Moore’s gardener, named Jay Duychinck, had a white beard, stubby pipe, large belly, jolly demeanor, and red dimpled cheeks.

Despite the poem’s increasing fame with each passing Christmas, Moore didn’t seem entirely comfortable with it. It was only in 1844 that Moore finally published A Visit From St. Nicholas.

However, the copy found amid Odell’s papers is dated much earlier: 1825. 

There had been some minor changes to it since the NB version. For example: sugar plumbs vs sugar plums, pawing and prancing vs prancing and pawing, and was slung over vs was flung over.

However, one considerably more major difference is that two of the reindeer have somewhat different names: Donner and Blitzen are called Donder and Blixen!

Those two reindeer names are interesting because they are much closer to Dutch words, and Moore’s gardener, Jay Duychinck, was Dutch. 

The two reindeer’s early names sound an awful lot like “dunder” and “blixem,” which mean thunder and lightning in Dutch.

When Jonathan Odell died, in his will he left 400 acres of his massive estate named Rookwood to “provide the people of Fredericton a place to play.” That land is today Fredericton’s Odell Park.

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

MORE CHRISTMAS BACKYARD HISTORIES:

Santa and The Flaming Christmas Tree Incident

The First Christmas In North America

Snapdragons: The Hottest Game of Christmas Past

Before Santa Claus There Was The Queen of the Fairies

Christmas 1868 In Their Own Words