Tynan Portillo presents, featuring the best horror stories of the 19th century, welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Narrated by Tynan Portillo.

Today’s episode, A Visit From St. Nicholas, or The Night Before Christmas, by Clement Clark Moore. Most likely. We’ll get into that.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancerand Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Welcome back to The Poe Show, happy holidays and a very merry Christmas to all you listeners this season. Enjoy all the hot cocoa, Christmas music, candy canes and Terry’s chocolate oranges you want. That’s one of my favorite things about Christmas.

I took November off for the podcast in order to get some more things in order, and I’m excited about all of them. I’ve got another Victorian Christmas ghost story in the works for this month and I’m branching out a bit with the content on this podcast. I’ve been doing a lot of research in order to bring to you the first True Crime from the 19th Century episode of the podcast! That’s right, the true crime bug bit me too, and if you love listening to true crime podcasts, you can add this one to your list by January of next year. Gonna start off strong! I’ll talk a bit more about that episode in the future, before I upload it.

If you enjoy this podcast, then be sure to follow and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts and more. Just visit thepoeshow.com. If you’d like to have me work with you on a voiceover project then email poeshowpod@gmail.com with details. I am also listed as an audiobook narrator on the site ACX for Audible if you need an audiobook narrator. Finally, if you’d like to send any fanmail, ask any questions or give suggestions for podcast episodes, then click the link in the description to send an anonymous text message directly to the podcast.

Speaking of, I got another fan mail message recently that I’d like to share. And if you’d like me to read any of your fan mail on the podcast, just text the podcast directly using the link in the description.

The fanmail reads, “I enjoy your podcast a lot, especially because it features a lot of old literature that I myself love. My question is this: Why do you love classical literature? Why did you choose it to be the focus of your podcast? Thank you.”

Thank you very much for the question. Well, in a way, I see this podcast as a form of keeping these authors alive. I’d like to think that the journals I make now in my own hand will be read by my children and grandchildren and so on, and they’ll glean some life lessons or inspiration from my writing, just as I do from these authors. But classical literature is important to me because I took some classes in high school that made me love to read, and got me interested in older books. Just as well, my grandfather on my mother’s side was an avid reader. He devoured books like nobody’s business and I had the privilege of being gifted one of his personal books with his annotations in it. And it’s so extremely important to me. Especially because my grandfather didn’t really have anything to leave his children besides his books. So I have a piece of him with me, that I’ll pass down in my family. A way to keep him alive. That’s a reason I do this podcast on classical literature, especially authors who aren’t entirely well known.

At the same time, I started this podcast - and you can learn about this on the episode “The Dream” with Madison Portillo on this podcast - but I started it because I was taking a voiceover class and the coach had been going over the different categories of voiceover work and she said “When it comes to podcasts, that’s something you usually do on your own.” And she kept going, went right past it. But that one sentence stuck in my head, and I suddenly, with no other prompting, wanted to start a podcast. But what do I focus it on? Immediately I thought “Edgar Allan Poe podcast” and I wrote it down, and the rest is history.

Looking back, I think the reason that phrase stuck with me, “It’s something you do on your own,” is because I wanted to have some control over my career. As any actor knows, you can’t control a lot in your career. You make yourself the best you can and build relationships, but you ultimately can’t control if you get cast or who you work with, etc. So one thing actors are told to do all the time is “If you’re not working on something, work on something on your own.” Jonathan Lithgow once gave the advice, “Have an interest that you have to give up because you got busy acting.” I like that. So that’s what I think my mind was telling me back then; that podcasting with literature I enjoyed and making the music for each episode was going to be a fulfilling, fun and impactful way to take control of my own career. And one day, I’m sure I’ll miss an upload because I got too busy acting.

I'm also appreciative of the fact that doing this podcast introduced me to a whole new skill set to develop. I’m not just an actor, singer, dancer anymore. I used to be just a triple threat. But now I’m an actor, singer, dancer, writer, podcaster, YouTuber, composer, and audio engineer! It’s a great conversation starter! Anyways, thank you again for your question. If any of you have more questions, text the podcast using the link in the description.

Now for the poem.

This poem was first seen in 1823, penned by a mysterious anonymous author. And it wouldn’t be known who the author was until 14 years later in 1837 when it was credited to Clement Clarke Moore. Now, like I said before, there is a bit of controversy when it comes to the authorship of this poem, but we’ll get to that.

This poem, while it’s widely known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” or something along those lines - The Night Before Christmas maybe - its actual title is “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Now, the reason I put this episode’s title as The Night Before Christmas is because that is the phrase which sticks with people and would make them think of the poem. I gotta do everything I can to help that algorithm.

This poem is also responsible for many elements of the modern interpretation of Santa Claus we have today, as a jolly man with a sleigh and reindeer who delivers presents on the night of Christmas Eve. Other elements of Santa Clause would come later from an illustrator named Thomas Nast. Thomas Nast illustrated Christmas stories for the Harper’s Weekly magazine in New York, and he added things like a naughty and nice list, workshop elves and working at the North Pole, which became the framework of Santa, built upon the foundation of Moore’s poem.

But if you want to know where the idea of modern Santa Claus REALLY came from, look no further than your favorite can of soda. I mean, mine is Sprite, so…and maybe you actually like root beer, um…it’s Coke. We’re gonna talk about Coke real quick.

In 1931, Coca-Cola was mainly known as a summer drink and that made it hard to get people to buy it during the winter. That is, until Haddon Sundblom was hired as Coca-Cola’s ad artist. Sundblom took inspiration from Thomas Nast’s drawings of Santa Claus, and created his own oil painting to be used in Coca-Cola ads. His first painting is a very famous one called “My Hat’s Off” and it depicts a large, jolly Santa Claus in a red suit, holding a cold Coke. And for many years after that, Sundblom continued to make new ads for the Coca-Cola company, and years after that they still kept using Santa to sell soda. Which eventually became the main way that Americans see and think about Santa Claus.

I find it extremely important to mention these human artists who worked for Coke, for reasons which you can probably guess. This year, Coke has decided to use AI to make a commercial.

And I have to be honest. The only way Coke will stop using AI is through one of these two avenues. One: people stop buying the product because of it. Or two: people meme the hell out of the company for using AI and ruin its reputation. Those are the only ways that Coke will listen to anyone. They talk money, so you’ve gotta talk money. I mean, as far as they’re concerned, they’ve just saved millions of dollars in marketing because they didn’t have to hire actors, writers, directors, editors, grips, gaffers, script supervisors, set builders, prop masters, costume designers, makeup artists, you get the picture. But that’s so many jobs that are just gone now. Gone. The only way they will abandon this use of AI is if it becomes a marketing nightmare and costs them money.

And the thing is, AI is so new that copyright laws are non-existent. Anyone can use that ad for anything they want now! Imagine if Pepsi just did the exact same add but replaced Coke with Pepsi? That would be the most hilarious W to get from this thing.

I don’t even know what to say about the interactive Santa snow globe stuff, but.

Why should you care? Well, because it’s not just a commercial. It’s a formula for saving money. And they will use that formula throughout their businesses and others. Ask yourself this: if they took humans out of sports, would I still be interested? Would I still gamble on games and have favorite players? If your answer is no, you’re beginning to grasp what writers and actors and artists are screaming right now.

When you take human beings out of the game, there’s no point in watching.

Onto the controversy of this poem’s authorship.

Some have claimed that the original author was actually Henry Livingston Jr, but Livingston never personally claimed to be the author and never published the poem with his name. It’s also pretty well recorded that Clement Clarke Moore had read this poem to his 6 children while hosting a Christmas Eve party in 1822, before the poem was published. And Clement would have wanted to keep it a secret that he wrote the poem because he held many positions of importance at his Seminary in New York and the poem wasn’t a scholarly writing. Of course, professors since then have debated with enough heat about who the author really is that it’s kind of hard to say. I believe the evidence moreover points to Clement Clarke Moore being the author.

Moore was involved very closely with his Protestant Episcopal Church. He was a Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature and wrote the first Hebrew and English lexicon in 1809. He lived to be 83 years old, dying in 1863, just 5 days before his 84th birthday. Supposedly, if Clarke wrote the poem, he had based the St. Nicholas of this poem on the actual Saint Nicholas himself as well as a Dutch Handyman who had given him a ride home. Which makes sense because the Dutch holiday of Sinterklaas was the time for gathering to exchange gifts in remembrance of the patron saint of children, St. Nicholas. And even today, Sinterklaas is still celebrated in places like the Netherlands, Belgium and some parts of Germany.

I find it most interesting that this poem is in the perspective of a parent, about to go to sleep. And the moon shone so brightly that it looked like it was midday, so there’s no mistaking what the narrator saw. And Saint Nick, with only a little round belly, is actually quite small, in order to fit down the chimney! This version of Saint Nick also smokes a pipe and wears a full fur coat, covered in soot. As he would be in reality if he climbed down a well used chimney. He pleasantly winks, fills the stockings with toys, touches the side of his nose (which I’m sure everyone has seen in at least one movie or show, but that came from Moore’s friend Washington Irving’s stories of Saint Nick) goes back up the chimney and flies away with his reindeer.

I love that this poem is from the perspective of a parent, therefore a much more cynical point of view. And to know that Moore read this poem to his children is such a touching detail, almost as if he’s telling his children that he believes.

I have heard some people say that it’s pointless to have children believe in Santa Claus, because he isn’t real and only teaches children that they’ve been lied to. I am not one who subscribes to that belief, perhaps because I’m American and it’s just a huge part of my culture. But here’s why I think Santa Claus and Christmas are so important:

Children deserve dreams. They deserve hopes and imagination and magic because they are at a stage in their human development that they can actually believe it’s real. That to them it is 100% real is one of the best sources of joy you can give them. I’d much rather pay for my future children not to have things, but to have experiences. I know it’s kind of a hot topic, but that’s why so many people go to Disneyland and DisneyWorld, because it’s a reminder of the magic of childhood. That magic is also what makes them creative, and what can spark them to think critically. And I believe children deserve to have people in their lives who teach them to believe in something good in the world.

And one of the best ways to gently bring kids to the truth of Santa Claus is to have them become Santa. If they have siblings or other family that you’re planning on giving gifts to, then you get to explain to them that Santa Claus is an idea. A symbol. He’s like a mascot for the spirit of gift giving and generosity, and now you get to bring him to life. You get to bring some of the magic to Christmas.

Thank you for listening to this episode and be sure to follow, subscribe and give this podcast a 5 star rating because that helps the algorithm spread it to more people. You can follow this podcast on TikTok @poeshowpodcast, on Instagram @thepoeshowpodcast and of course at thepoeshow.com. All links will be in the description. Again, if you’d like to contact me about doing voiceover work for a project of yours, email poeshowpod@gmail.com with the details or you can find me on ACX for Audible as an audiobook narrator.

That’s all for now. But you’ll hear from me again, on the next episode of The Poe Show.