“'Twas the night before Christmas…”

So opens the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which tells the story of a nighttime visit from Santa Claus to a family’s home. Coming down the chimney, jolly old St. Nick delivers toys for the narrator’s young children while his sleigh, pulled by eight flying reindeer, wait on the roof to take him to other children’s homes.

WHITE HOUSE PROMOTES 'IMPACTFUL' BIDENOMICS IN END-OF-YEAR MEMO

Saturday marks the 200th anniversary of the poem’s first publication in the Troy Sentinel, a paper that served part of upstate New York. Much later, a friend would peg Clement Clarke Moore as the author.

Moore was a biblical scholar and professor at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He had written other works, such as a Hebrew and English lexicon and an 1804 scathing indictment of Thomas Jefferson, accusing the third president of communicating heretical religious views in the founder’s “Notes on the State of Virginia.” Moore eventually would affirm his........

© Washington Examiner