The NIght Before Christmas

Today in America, we celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. But for two hundred years, Christmas was a cultural battleground. While Christians tried to honor the birth of Christ, others kept the time as a drinking holiday. Early on, the battle seemed lost when, in colonial Massachusetts, the seasonal drinking became so rampant, the Puritans outlawed Christmas.


Then, a Christian seminary professor wrote a Christmas poem. And, as its phenomenal popularity swept the country, it proved to be the pivotal victory for the Christian side. For within its words was coded a Christian message of reconciliation. The seminary professor was Clement Clarke Moore—and the poem was The Night Before Christmas.

Legend says Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve in 1822 during a sleigh ride home from Greenwich Village after buying a turkey for his family. Moore read the poem to his wife and six children the night he wrote it, and supposedly thought no more about it but a family friend heard about it and submitted the poem to the Sentinel, a newspaper in upstate New York, which published it anonymously the following Christmas on December 23, 1823 and people have been telling this imaginary tale ever since.

On this Christmas Eve 2008 - I wish to everyone

a very merry and Christ filled Christmas.