In 1823, as the story goes, Moore wrote a poem for the amusement of his children called "A Visit From St. Nicholas" in a sequence of rhyming couplets. Moore usually did not write light verse, but it was said a woman visitor to the home at Christmastime enjoyed the poem so much she jotted down the verses from memory. Moore did not share the poem with anyone but his family, but apparently this visitor did share it, with a Troy, NY, newspaper. The poem caught the fancy of many people and was reprinted in different papers for ten years before Moore was identified as the author. He himself did not acknowledge it until 1844, when it was included in a book of more somber poetry. It created several of the now-traditional features of the Santa Claus story: that he is plump and jolly, smokes a pipe, and drives a sleigh driven by eight reindeer named Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem. (The last two, whose names mean "thunder" and "lightning" in Dutch, were later changed to the more German "Donder"—or "Donner"—and "Blitzen.") An earlier poem, "Old Sante Claus," had introduced Santa driving one reindeer pulling a flying wagon, but the eight and the sleigh were Moore's creation. His image of Santa, according to Moore, was based on a elderly Dutch servant at Chelsea.
Or was it?
For many years a case has been made that Moore was not the author of the poem. The family of Henry Livingston Jr. have long claimed that he wrote the poem, and several years before Moore. Livingston was apparently fond of writing light verse in rhyming couplets, and, as with Moore's claim, this poem was written for his children. Supposedly there were other clues: the reindeer named Dunder and Blixem when Moore did not know Dutch, the lighthearted narrative unlikely to be written by a stern professor, etc. It was said that there was physical evidence of this, but, as homes back in the 18th and 19th century were heated and lit by fire, they were always in danger of burning down, and the Livingston evidence was lost in a house fire. Several scholars have looked into this claim and have differing opinions on claims of authorship.
Two books are available on this controversy, the simpler Inventing Santa Claus: The Mystery of Who Really Wrote The Most Celebrated Yuletide Poem of All Time by Carlo DeVito, and a longer, more scholarly work Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore vs. Henry Livingston Question by MacDonald P. Jackson.
There is also Seth Kaller's website on the controversy (he's firmly in the Moore camp).
Here's a link to a 1968, 26 minute animated story about the writing of the poem: The Night Before Christmas. In this version Moore writes the poem for his daughter Charity, who requested "a book about Santa Claus" as a gift, but he could not find her one. This animated tale is particularly notable for several things: although done in limited animation and featuring a cute dog for some chuckles, the drawings stick very much to how the Moore family, their home, and the world around them must have looked. Moore and his wife and the children, with the exception of little Clement, wear fairly authentic 1820s styles, Gretchen the cook works over an open fire and with an oven in the fireplace, Mrs. Moore mentions bringing a bedwarmer, etc. Moore did have children named Charity, Clement, and Emily, and apparently Peter is the "Dutch servant" he based the look of St. Nicholas on. (Little Clement is the only false note. Little boys of his social class would have still been in skirts at his age, or perhaps in pantaloons, but certainly not the overalls he was wearing, which were not invented until the 1870s. Also, the Moores would not have decorated a Christmas tree.) In addition, the musical version of the poem used in the story was arranged by Ken Darby, and had a long history on the music charts and on old-time radio. It was originally performed on The Johnson Wax Program with Fibber McGee and Molly in 1947.
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