The other day, in the course of looking up something else, I ran across a once-familiar poem: “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” written in 1822 by Clement Clark Moore, a biblical scholar in New York.
St. Nicholas was the bishop of Myra, a Turkish city, in the fourth century, and was famed for his generosity. Perhaps fittingly he is, among other things, the patron saint of pawnbrokers. The Dutch contracted “Sint Nicolaas” into “Sinterklaas,” which emerged in English as “Santa Claus.”
The poem opens with “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,” and proceeds to describe the arrival and departure of a “jolly old elf.” It struck me that it had been years since I’d read the whole poem or heard anyone recite it, and after re-reading it, I realized why. It doesn’t fit our modern era of fitness, environmental awareness and political correctness.
We can start with the children, “snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.” Recall that several years ago, there was a dispute in California about the stories in children’s schoolbooks? The characters were rewarded with candy or ice cream, thereby implying that these were worthy substances, rather than contributors to the epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes.
Good modern American children would have visions of organic local carrots and broccoli, not sugar plums — which are not even sugared fruits, but small pieces of candy shaped like plums.
After the noise on the rooftop, “Down the chimney came St. Nicholas with a bound.” There was either a fire at the bottom of the flue, or there wasn’t. If there was, then they were burning wood, natural gas or coal, adding to the carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. If there was no fire, then precious house heat was escaping, representing a waste of resources, especially if the house had electric heat.
Either way, this does not provide appropriate instruction for American children.
When St. Nicholas appears, he is “dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot.” I need not go into detail about how PETA feels about humans clothing themselves with peltry. St. Nicholas ought to feel fortunate that they weren’t lined up outdoors with paint-ball guns to ruin his cold-weather outfit.
Not that he would have minded the paint blobs, since his clothes were already “all tarnished with ashes and soot.”
So also, were his lungs. “The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth. And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.” It might be his own business if he smoked while driving the sleigh through the sky, but it’s quite another for him to be in a house with small children and exposing them to secondhand smoke.
The negligent father here does not douse the toxic intruder with a slop bucket. Instead, he shares some laughter with the filthy fur-clad carcinogen emitter, then observes that this alleged “saint” had a “round belly” and “was chubby and plump.”
You can’t go a day without running across some story about the dangers of obesity, how it contributes to strokes and heart attacks, yet here’s a fat guy put in a position where impressionable children will regard him favorably. Further, “his cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry,” which indicates he might have been hitting the eggnog — on a night when he was driving, no less.
Add it all up, and you can see why this poem has gone out of style. Despite his charitable impulses, the St. Nicholas of this poem is a terrible role model for modern children.
Nonetheless, I’m pleased to concur in its conclusion: “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) is a freelance writer, history buff, publisher of Colorado Central Magazine in Salida and frequent contributor to The Post.
