By JOHN BOS
This is the ninth year in a row that I have “reinterpreted” the classic “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (aka “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), a poem that first appeared in the Troy (New York) Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823. There was no author’s name attached to it. It remained unattributed for 13 years until the professor/poet Clement Clarke Moore stepped forward to claim the work. The story goes that Moore had written the poem for his children But a housekeeper found it and liked it so much that she sent it to the newspaper — without Moore’s knowledge.
By 1844, the poem was included in an anthology of Moore’s work, however, there was a problem. The family of Henry Livingston Jr., who died five years after the work was published and eight years before Moore took credit, claimed that Henry had been reading the poem to them for 15 years prior to its publication.
My case for Livingston as the author rests on the fact that his mother was Dutch. (As were my mother and father. So I’m kind of partial!) You can see the Dutch influence in the names of Santa’s reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, which were originally “Dunder” and “Blixem,” the Dutch words for “Thunder” and “Lightning.”
Given the dark times we are living in I have attempted to be more upbeat in this year’s rewording of whomever’s poem.
It IS the night before Christmas, and all through their house
My son, he is reading, and so is his spouse.
All iPhones are silent, turned off with great care,
In hopes we might avoid the latest nightmare.
My grandsons are nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of college dance in their heads;
And gramma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Have just settled down for a long winter’s nap.
My sister and her daughters, so happy together,
My brother and family did not know whether
To turn off PBS where they flew like a flash,
To avoid hearing all that conspiracy trash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Showed carolers singing and wanting to know
Why we were waiting for someone to appear,
With a message of great, good news cheer.
They sang to me, John, do not wax esoteric,
About Recorder columnists you find are fantastic.
More incisive than most, their insights not lame,
I now wish to thank them, at least some by name;
“Now, HAZZARD! now, WOODS! now, NEWMAN and KELLY!
On, BROWN! on HYNES! on, DOERNER and CHARNEY!
To the top of my list! My thanks to you all,
Now write away! write away! write away all!”
As dry eyes that moisten when I look into the sky,
What I see in the heavens, it just makes me sigh,
For our earth back in time before CO2,
That will kill us all if it continues to spew.
And then, in my thinking that I needed more proof,
I began understanding, I could not be aloof.
So I prayed and then I heard something profound,
As she spoke on the telly, her passion unbound.
She wore simple clothes, from her head to her foot,
With her recycled ethos emphatically put
In a bundle of clothes, she had flung on her back,
Our youthful truth-teller, whose words give no slack.
Her eyes — how they twinkled! Her language not merry!
Her cheeks were like roses, her message quite scary!
From her droll little mouth, Greta insisted “no, no, no!
No more blah, blah, blah, fossil fuels must go!”
The stump of a tree, nothing else to bequeath,
Except smoke that was choking survivors beneath,
By the Amazon River, now barren and quite smelly,
Their hallowed homeland, a paradise once lovely.
But there’s “hope in the land,” Greta said it herself,
I so want to believe her, in spite of myself;
“Humanity is at a crossroads” these words she said;
“If we can all come together, there’ll be a future ahead.”
She spoke no more words, but went straight to her work,
She went straight to Glasgow; then confronted a jerk
Who complained about those kids, each one who opposes
The stench of pollution that clogs up their noses.
I’m hoping against hope, we’ll get out of this pickle,
But we’re moving too slow, hardly making a ripple.
I want to encourage, to and end this year right,
So, permit me to exclaim, ere I fade out of sight:
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD FIGHT!
My column “Connecting the Dots” will return on Saturday, Jan. 8. The year ahead is daunting to contemplate. There will, no doubt, be lots of dots to connect in 2022. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at john01370@gmail.com. Until then, Happy New Year!