On this date in 1823 -- "The Night Before Christmas" poem -- anonymous poet

from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor, American Public Media):

On December 23 in 1823, a poem entitled "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel in New York City. The unsigned poem began, "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."
For a long time, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was attributed to New York seminary professor and poet Clement Clark Moore, who was said to have written it as a Christmas gift for his children, but in recent years it has been argued that Major Henry Livingston Jr. was the true author. The poem is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus as a tubby, bearded man in a red suit who travels in a package-laden sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer.