Almost every American child has heard the poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Many adults can remember the first few lines. But the world famous prose started out mired in controversy about who wrote the famous lines.

Columbia University researched the matter and found that On Christmas Eve 1822, Clement Clarke Moore, a newly minted professor of Greek and Hebrew literature, made the poem public. He was hosting a holiday gathering in his New York home and at some point in the evening he cleared his throat and began reading a lighthearted poem titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which he had jotted down as a Christmas gift for his six children.

With guests and family assembled, Moore uttered what would become an immortal couplet: ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The poem describes the Christmas Eve antics of St. Nicholas, the beloved fourth-century patron saint of children.

As the "publishing" story goes, a Moore family friend, Harriet Butler of Troy, New York, heard Moore read the poem and asked to copy it down. A year later, at Christmastime, a friend submitted the unsigned poem to the Troy Sentinel, which published it anonymously. 

Several people claimed to have authored the poem but collegiate and news researchers claimed that Moore was the definitive writer, albeit 100 years after he first read the famous words.

Moore lived to see his poem, treasured by millions as an enchanting evocation of the season’s essence, become the template for the character of Santa Claus. And when Moore, who was a Columbia trustee for forty-four years, died in 1863 after a short illness, the New York Herald hailed him as “one whose name will live long after him in the minds of the young through many generations.”

By Clement Clarke Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONNER and BLITZEN!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!