Twas the Night Before Christmas

Before this poem, there was no universally agreed-upon Santa Claus — no sleigh, no eight reindeer called by name, no chimney entrance, no jolly old elf with a round belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly. Clement Clarke Moore wrote it for his own children in 1823, and within a few decades it had quietly become the template every other Santa Claus story, image, and tradition was built on.Short...