Old Santeclaus

Long before Clement Clarke Moore gave the world 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' he wrote something stranger and darker. Old Santeclaus, published in 1821, is the forgotten ancestor of that holiday classic: a poem about a bearded figure who slides down chimneys and rewards good children with toys. But make no mistake, this is not the jolly Santa of modern imagination. Moore's Santeclaus is a moralist's invention, a stern gift-giver who sees everything and judges accordingly. The poem pulses with the anxious theology of early 19th-century America, where children's behavior was a matter of spiritual consequence. It is a window into how the secular joy of Christmas giving was slowly being invented, one watchful glance at the fireside. Read it as cultural archaeology: the rough draft of a myth that would conquer the world.