Censorship of Santa's Pipe from "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" Continues on Its 200th Anniversary

Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1/1/1881

"'Twas the Night Before Christmas," the beloved Clement Moore poem that was first published as "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" on December 23, 1823, celebrated its 200 anniversary this year.

Describing first seeing Santa Claus, Moore wrote: 

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 peddler 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

Those last two lines were edited out of a version of the poem published in 2012 by Canadian author Pamela McColl, an anti-smoking advocate who "believes that her non-smoking Santa will prevent new smokers." McColl spent $200,000 of her own money printing 55,500 copies in English, Spanish and French and hired an illustrator to redraw Santa without his pipe. 

“It’s denying access to the original voice of the author, and that’s censorship,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association told the New York Post. She likened McColl’s alteration to an Alabama publisher’s controversial purging of “indecent” language in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The National Coalition Against Censorship said, "Readers of the new version will note Santa is still overweight, at least for now."

This year, McColl is back with a new book “'Twas The Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem,” and is appearing at events to celebrate the bicentennial of the poem she altered.  (That book does contain the original, uncensored version of the poem, along with art work depicting Santa with his pipe. But when my nephew's public library offered a reading of the poem last month, it was the censored version.)

F.A.O Darley, 1862 edition

Turns out, smoke was central to the story that inspired Moore's poem. Discussing the controversy about the authorship of the poem, Wikipedia notes that Vassar college professor David Foster "contends that Moore hated tobacco and would, therefore, never have depicted Saint Nicholas with a pipe." However, document dealer and historian Seth Kaller, who once owned one of Moore's original manuscripts of the poem, notes that "the source of evidence for Moore's supposed disapproval of tobacco is 'The Wine Drinker,' another poem by him. In actuality, that verse contradicts such a claim. Moore's 'The Wine Drinker' criticizes self-righteous, hypocritical advocates of temperance who secretly indulge in the substances which they publicly oppose, and supports the social use of tobacco in moderation (as well as wine, and even opium)." 

Moore's "The Wine Drinker" begins: 

I'll drink my glass of generous wine ;
And what concern is it of thine
Thou self-erected censor pale,
Forever watching to assail
Each honest, open-hearted fellow
Who takes his liquor ripe and mellow,
And feels delight, in moderate measure,
With chosen friends to share his pleasure ?

It continues: 

If ev'ry good must be refus'd
That may by mortals be abus'd,
E'en abstinence may be excess,

And prove a curse, when meant to bless....

Nor is it hid from any eye,
That they who alcohol decry,
Virginia's weed will chew or smoke,
Or opium's treach'rous aid invoke,
And raise for abstinence a clatter
'Mid clouds of smoke, and spit and spatter.

Catherine Barnes, 1960

Kaller asserts that Moore, a friend of writer Washington Irving, may have acquired some of his knowledge of New York Dutch traditions (like Sinterklaas) from Irving. Irving's A History of New York 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 he lit his pipe by the fire, and sat himself down and smoked; and as he smoked, the smoke from his pipe ascended into the air and spread like a cloud overhead. 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. 

Thomas Nast, 1874

Irving's book, a parody originally published under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker on St. Nicholas Day (December 6) 1809, "profoundly influenced the American Christmas," according to the New York Times. "His melding of jolly St. Nick and an English commemoration of old into a wintry celebration of nostalgia attests to the rich cultural legacy bequeathed to us by this native New Yorker. Within a decade of the publication of Irving's 'Sketch Book,' New Yorkers were greeting each other with Christmas wishes, and stores on Broadway extended their hours to accommodate shoppers."

So by censoring Santa and his magical smoke in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," we're also censoring Washington Irving, who gave us such memorable characters as Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman, and Santa Claus. 

Also in 2023: Marijuana is replaced with coffee in the children's edition of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire and Roald Dahl books are rewritten to remove language deemed offensive.