It's become a Christmas classic, its author's best-known work. But when the poem that starts with that famous first line " 'Twas the night before Christmas" was first published 175 years ago, it appeared anonymously.

Author Clement Moore was a bit ashamed of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," actually. A writer and professor with a doctorate from Columbia University, he had put together scholarly works such as a dictionary of the Hebrew language. To take credit for lines such as "His cheeks were like Roses, his nose like a Cherry" just wouldn't do.

But after his poem showed up in New York's Troy Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823, it spread from newspaper to newspaper, year after year. Finally, in 1844, Moore included it in a volume of his work.

He had composed it for his six children for Christmas 1822. A friend visiting the Moores in New York City heard him read the poem (or one of the children gave it to her) and she went home to Troy and gave it to the Sentinel editor.

Moore apparently was inspired to write the poem on a trip to upstate New York in 1822. He was visiting a cousin, Mary McVicker, whose husband had died. McVicker and her four children lived in a house called Constable Hall. Every room had a large chimney. ("Down the chimney Saint Nicholas came with a bound.") The windows had shutters that opened to the inside. ("Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.") There was a porch, 125 feet long. (" 'To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!' ")

And tending the garden was a Dutchman named Pieter. As the story goes, he was rather plump -- and downright jolly. Pieter was Moore's inspiration for Santa Claus, says John Constable, 82, the last of the family to live in Constable Hall. So the modern description of Santa was born.

For the record, Constable, who now lives in Watertown, N.Y., never remembers the place having a problem with mice.

"I barely remember them talking about Clement Moore," Constable says. "I was about 7 or 8 years old. I guess he was very thoughtful, a family man."

Moore sent the family a hand-written copy of the poem, but Constable doesn't know what happened to it. (The original sold at a Christie's auction for $255,000.) But a chess set the writer sent is still at the house.

It was a family tradition to read Moore's poem every Christmas Eve, Constable says. But not anymore. Constable Hall, now a museum on the state and national historic registers, is closed for the winter.

Pub Date: 12/25/98