“‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” read the opening lines of Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Moore wrote the whimsical poem as a Christmas gift for his six children; he first read it to them on a cold Christmas Eve in Manhattan in 1882.
Decades later, another father would read the poem every December to his son, James Hadley, now the writer and stage director of Cirque du Soleil’s premiere holiday show “‘Twas the Night Before.” For many, the poem evokes warm holiday nostalgia.
