Let us hope so. Q is starting his own celebrations, and all of us have hung up our stockings and are looking forward to a Christmas Eve filled with possible Q posts and all of our best dreams for a conservative future. Christmas is a season and a special time. We each enjoy it in our own way. For me, it's ornaments and carols and being with family and friends, and celebrating the writing of a man I've grown to love - Henry Livingston. For you, it's special, too, I'm sure. And if we can't slide on Christmas Eve then really, what's the use of it all.
So - cardinals and blue jays on snow laden boughs, and Christmas dinners of all varieties weighing down every table, and parents leaning over rapt children and reading the words of a famous Christmas Eve poem which they gently tell them was written by a kind and good man, Henry Livingston, and not the Scrooge of Christmases Past, Clement Moore.
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Original publication in the Troy Sentinel of December 23, 1823
December 30, 1773
When Don Foster looked for the first publication of Happy Christmas, he found that it was in the first publication of that very poem in 1823. And yet here is Henry, fifty years earlier, wishing a Happy Christmas to his dear Sally Welles.
Moore, if you're curious, says "Merry Christmas," as well as mother. Henry says "papa" and "mama".
