There was a piece on NPR this morning about the theory that “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.”, better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” wasn’t written by Clement Moore but by Henry Livingston. Don Foster in “Author Unknown” gives his reasoning for this by comparing use of grammar and syntax as well as other research.
Now the question is, who does one have to convince before people start giving Livingston credit ? Is it just a matter of convincing enough scholars with your research ? Will there be papers written and presented at conferences ? Is there a vote as to whom to believe and if so who gets to vote ?
I thought it really interesting that Moore wrote “discreet” letters asking about the provenence of the “anonymous” poem before taking over the authorship. (I am being very careful not to say he claimed authorship, because it appeared he didn’t. He just did not say he did not author it.)
I guess to answer the OP, you hope that eventually people are won over to the side with the best evidence, but it can take a long time. Heck, people still say that Paul wrote Hebrews, and look how long that has been around!
Foster has a pretty persuasive argument - Snopes is convinced and after reading the article, I’m fairly won over (I would like to read some of the other poetry of both, just to see how obvious the differences are.)
How does it become “official”? My best WAG is that if TNBC is in the public domain and Moore’s descendants no longer have a financial interest, there won’t be much of a fuss about it.