A Christmas Mystery

Here's a real–life Christmas mystery for you to ponder.

Don't feel bad if you can't solve it. It's been around for nearly two centuries.

Anyway, I'm sure you're familiar with "The Night Before Christmas."

You know the poem I'm talking about — the one that begins "Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house/Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ..."

Yeah, I knew you were familiar with it.

Well, anyway, it was published anonymously 187 years ago today in the Sentinel of Troy, N.Y. And it is given credit for just about everything that is believed by children about Santa Claus — how he looks, how many reindeer he has and what their names are, the notion that he uses a sleigh to make his Christmas Eve deliveries, the idea that he leaves presents for children all over the world.

For a long time, the poem was reprinted with no author's name mentioned. Then, a scholar and professor of first Oriental and Greek literature and then Biblical studies named Clement Clarke Moore acknowledged authorship.

He claimed to have written it for his children and had wished to remain anonymous because of his position, but he was persuaded by his children to come forward so it could be included in an anthology of his works that was published more than two decades after the poem appeared in the Sentinel.

And, for more than a century, it was generally accepted that Moore was the author.

But then, along came English professor Donald Foster, a pioneer in the field of content analysis. What is content analysis, you may ask? Well, it is a methodology for studying the content of communication. In Foster's case, he has specialized in studying texts to determine whether they were authentic. At times, his skills have been used in criminal investigations.

Foster first came to public attention in the late 1980s, when he explored the mystery of the dedication of Shakespeare's sonnets. While he was involved in that research, Foster came across what he believed to be a previously unknown work by Shakespeare. Opinion among scholars has been mixed.

So, too, has been the response to his assertion that a writer named Henry Livingston Jr. actually wrote "The Night Before Christmas." Foster apparently was persuaded to join a movement by Livingston's descendants to have him recognized as the poem's author.

That hasn't happened yet. There is still considerable dispute over the authorship.

Which man wrote the poem? Well, here is what is known.

In 1837, 14 years after the poem was first published, the Pennsylvania Inquirer and Daily Courier credited Moore. Its source was one of Moore's friends.

Scholars (including Foster) have pointed out that the style and phrasing used in the poem resembles other works by Livingston.

However, it has been argued that Foster focused only on the passages from the poem that conformed to his theory, and that many of Moore's works also are similar in style and phrasing to the poem.

So who's right? Who wrote the poem?

Well, in the words of ... er, whoever ... Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.