Origin of Santa Claus -- Re: Night Before Christmas

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

The article “Did the popular image of Santa Claus originate in a Coca-Cola ad campaign?”

( http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msantaclaus.html )

assumes without question that the authorship of
“A Visit From St. Nicholas” was Clement Clarke Moore.

As it turns out, this is actually an issue quite under
some contention these days – there are some strong
arguments attributing the authorship to a
Major Henry Livingston, Jr.

It would be great to see some straight dope on the
authorship here.

References:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44875-2000Dec23.html

http://www.ultranet.com/~maida/familytree/henry/index.htm

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/xmas/moore.htm

2

I doubt if Cecil could do a more thorough job than Don Foster has already done. It’s all in his book Author Unknown.