Quotes of the Day (“A Visit From St. Nicholas”—and A Small But Significant Variation)

"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”—“A Visit From St. Nicholas,” published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel on December 23, 1823, later attributed to the Rev. Clement Clark Moore

“'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring... nothin'... no action... dullsville!” —The soused Mrs. Margie MacDougall (played by Hope Holiday), speaking to a similarly polluted C.C. Baxter (played by Jack Lemmon), two lonely souls in a bar on Christmas Eve, in The Apartment (1960), written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, directed by Wilder

“A Visit From St. Nicholas” has, of course, become one of the most beloved traditions of the holiday season. With Moore being a fellow Columbia College grad and all--and his father even being the President of the school--I’d love to think of this wonderfully imaginative poem as coming from his hand. But it just doesn’t sound a lot like the work he did through much of his life.

One version of the poem’s conception is that it came to him while out sleigh-riding with his children in 1822; another, that he was inspired by Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker History.

But think of it—Moore, a professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia who also compiled a two-volume Hebrew dictionary, was not known for his sense of playfulness. 

In fact, if you subtract his productivity and his children, he sounds like a soulmate of the Rev. Edward Casaubon, the stodgy scholar of George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

In recent years, a more likely candidate has risen. Don Foster of Vassar College has proposed as the author Henry Livingston Jr., a gentleman-poet of Dutch descent. That sounds more like it, if you ask me.

In addition to popularizing a number of notions about St. Nicholas, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" has also inspired countless parodies. My favorite short one is what I just quoted above, from Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning The Apartment. 

The center of its plot—the willingness of businessmen to fool around with female underlings in the office—would now invite sexual harassment lawsuits. But the film’s abundant wit and heart haven’t aged one iota.

If you’re tiring of It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, or holiday films that pour on the sentimentality far more egregiously and far less skillfully, watch Wilder’s classic.