The poem has been called "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American"[1] and is largely responsible for some of the conceptions of Santa Claus from the mid-19th century to today.

He carries a sack of toys, and the father watches his visitor deliver presents and fill the stockings hanging by the fireplace, and laughs to himself.

In 1842, the noted poet and editor William Cullen Bryant credited Moore as the author when he included the piece in an anthology of American poetry he had compiled.

By having Saint Nicholas arrive the night before, Moore "deftly shifted the focus away from Christmas Day with its still-problematic religious associations".

Kaller has offered a point-by-point rebuttal of both Foster's linguistic analysis and external findings, buttressed by the work of autograph expert James Lowe and Joe Nickell, author of Pen, Ink and Evidence.

[5][9][10] On January 20, 1829, Troy editor Orville L. Holley alluded to the author of the Christmas poem, using terms that accurately described Moore as a native and current resident of New York City, and as "a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions".

[12] Four poems including A Visit from St. Nicholas appeared under Moore's name in The New-York Book of Poetry, edited by Charles Fenno Hoffman (New York: George Dearborn, 1837).

Prior to 1844, the poem was included in two 1840 anthologies, attributed to "Clement C. Moore" in Selections from The American Poets, edited by William Cullen Bryant (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840), pp.

David Butler) who allegedly showed the poem to Sentinel editor Orville L. Holley, was a family friend of Moore's and possibly a distant relative.

[citation needed] While textual analyses by English scholars have pointed to Livingston as the likelier author, subsequent tests using forensic linguistics techniques developed by computer scientists have come to the opposite conclusion.

In his 2023 book The Fight for "The Night": Resolving the Authorship Dispute over "The Night Before Christmas," retired litigator Tom A. Jerman reported using Duquesne University computer scientist Patrick Juola's Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program to compare the poem to the works of Moore and Livingston, with 16 of 17 tests pointing to Moore as the likelier author.

Kaller claims that Foster cherry-picked only the poems that fit his thesis and that many of Moore's unpublished works have a tenor, phraseology, and meter similar to "A Visit".

It includes several references to legends of Saint Nicholas, including the following that bears a close relationship to the poem: And the sage Oloffe dreamed a dream,‍—‌and lo, the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children, and he descended hard by where the heroes of Communipaw had made their late repast.

And Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread over a great extent of country; and as he considered it more attentively, he fancied that the great volume of smoke assumed a variety of marvelous forms, where in dim obscurity he saw shadowed out palaces and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then faded away, until the whole rolled off, and nothing but the green woods were left.

And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hatband, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a very significant look; then, mounting his wagon, he returned over the tree-tops and disappeared.MacDonald P. Jackson, a professor emeritus at the University of Auckland and a fellow at the Royal Society of New Zealand, authored a book in 2016, Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"?

: Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore Vs. Henry Livingston Question,[25] in which he evaluates the opposing arguments, using author-attribution techniques of modern computational stylistics to examine the long-standing controversy.

Parts of the poem have been set to music numerous times, including a bowdlerized version (that omitted several verses such as "The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow ...

[34] In 1953, Perry Como recorded a recitation of the poem for RCA Victor with background music arranged and conducted by Mitchell Ayres.

[38] The first completely musical rendition, that used the text of the poem in its entirety without material additions or alterations, was the cantata "A Visit from St. Nicholas" composed by Lucian W. Dressel in 1992 and first performed by the Webster University Orchestra, SATB Soloists, and Chorus.

It was purchased for $280,000 by an unnamed "chief executive officer of a media company" who resides in New York City, according to Heritage Auctions which brokered the private sale.