THERE’S NO DOUBT about it: “The Night Before Christmas” is a classic holiday poem. Just who authored it, however, is a murkier issue. Originally titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” the poem was published anonymously in a Troy, New York, newspaper in 1823. For years the public believed that Clement Clark Moore, a New York City clergyman and Bible scholar, had written it. Others maintain, however, that the author was the Poughkeepsie-based poet Major Henry Livingston Jr. and that Moore—whose other verses are more somber and less playful—claimed authorship only after Livingston’s death. Though the controversy has not yet been put to bed, the poem remains a Christmas Eve bedtime favorite for many children. If visions of sugarplums are already dancing in your head, you’ll be able to answer these Christmas literature questions “in a twinkling.”
1. Which American writer recalled his older friend exclaiming, “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”?
2. In Dr. Seuss’s illustrated book How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), what color is the Grinch?
3. Which Christmas book ends with the immortal line, “God bless us, every one!”?
4. Which Christmas-themed short story, featuring Jim and Della Young, is often cited as an example of irony?
5. How many of the eight reindeer from “The Night Before Christmas” can you name?
ANSWERS
1. Truman Capote, in A Christmas Memory (1956).
2. Though he wears a red suit, the Grinch himself is drawn in black and white. The Grinch first turned green in his 1966 animated TV special.
3. A Christmas Carol (1843), by Charles Dickens.
4. “The Gift of the Magi” (1906), by O. Henry.
5. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Cupid, Comet, Donder, Blitzen. The last two reindeer were actually called “Dunder” and “Blixem” in the poem’s first printing—Dutch for thunder and lightning—which many have interpreted as evidence that the Dutch-speaking Livingston was in fact the poem’s true author.