Silent Night

assassinated in nineteen fourteen. Their marriage wasn't supposed to happen, as the sitting Emperor of the Austro Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, disapproved of his nephew and heir's choice, but true love won out and the happy couple were married for fourteen years. Austria Hungary, like most European nations throughout the nineteenth century, had a taste for empire. They occupied large swaths of Europe and believed that they had firm rights over territories

and people they ruled, even though their subjects disagreed. Revolutionary groups sprang up all across the empire in resistance to the rulers. It was the assassination that never should have happened. No amount of planning in the world could have helped the revolutionary group the Young Bosnians more than the luck they had that day. After multiple blunders on both sides, it was Gavrillo, princip standing on the wrong street corner at the right time, who managed to get the job done,

firing two shots at point blank range. This was the modern day shot heard round the world. The assassination of the heir of the Austro Hungarian Empire by a Serbian kicked off a chain of reactions and alliances that would destroy the world as they knew it. Admittedly, no one knew that at the time. After all, almost all of European monarchs were cousins through Queen Victoria. Back then, war

was treated as something romantic, adventurous, and even grand. It was solemn, for sure, but also something exciting that roused national pride. When the war was officially declared in July of nineteen fourteen, most people thought that it would be over by Christmas, but it was soon abundantly clear just how wrong they'd been. In both weaponry and tactics, this war was nothing like any they had ever seen. Before.

It wasn't confined to the battlefield either. It consumed farms, towns, and even cities, and along the way it destroyed an entire generation of young men and exhausted resources and national morale. Many of the young men who joined up were looking for adventure, glory, and maybe a chance to move up in the world. What they got instead was speedy training

that didn't equip them for what was to come. They were stuffed into muddy, wet trenches, choked and blinded with chlorine and mustard gas, plagued by trench foot and shell shock. By Christmas of nineteen fourteen, all those boys really wanted was to go home, but they were stuck there in the freezing mud. Pope Benedict the fifteenth, who took office not long after the war began, put out a call for a truce that Christmas. Maybe he hoped a break

from the fighting would bring leaders to their senses. If so, he was sadly disappointed when it was officially rejected from both sides. But then a funny thing happened. No one really knows how it started or where, but at around eight thirty PM, an officer from the Royal Irish Rifles sent a report to HQ saying Germans have illuminated their trenches, are singing songs and wishing us a happy Christmas. Compliments are being exchanged, but I am nevertheless taking all military precautions.

And then there was Bruce Bairn's father. He was a British machine gunner of the first Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was sick to death of all the mud, the sleeplessness, and the stale biscuits. And on Christmas Eve of nineteen fourteen, as he later recorded in his memoir, at about ten pm, he heard a commotion from the German trench. They were singing. Bairn's father wrote that when they started singing back, there was confused shouting from the

other trench. Then, in an accented English voice, one of the Germans asked the British to send a man over. Both sides cautiously agreed to meet halfway in no man's land, and climbed out of the trenches, taking a few careful steps into the contested territory. And there they met with smiles and handshakes. They traded songs, alcohol and tobacco, and

had a party under the stars together. Once the soldiers on both sides had met, they realized that not one of them really hated the other, not yet anyway, And it turned out that their little slice of the front line wasn't alone. Up and down the line, carol singing had broken out. The Germans sang silent Night and were answered by British troops. Rendition of the first Noel. Stories of the Christmas Truth don't appear in any official documents, though,

because it was never sanctioned. Instead, the soldiers who were doing the fighting and dying, who had lost their ideal as, decided to take a chance and see what might happen. They talked about home, their families, even soccer, and yes, of course, the good didn't last. Hostilities resumed just a few days later, and the worst was yet to come. But to me, the Christmas Truce is a beautiful reminder of humanity's ultimate desire for peace, no matter how short

lived it might have been. Every year as the holiday season approaches, Columbia University holds their u log festivities. The party includes food, drinks, a bonfire, and a reading of one of the most famous poems in American history. It's called a Visit from Saint Nicholas. But you'll probably recognize it by its opening lines, twas the nights before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring,

not even a mouse. The reading is an homage to the season and to an old Columbia University professor Clement Cmore Moore wrote A Visit from Saint Nicholas in eighteen twenty two as a Christmas gift to his young children. Or at least that's the story. The authorship of this American classic is actually the subject of a nearly two hundred year old debate. You see, the poem first appeared in print in eighteen twenty three. It was published anonymously

in a New York newspaper called The Troy Sentinel. People love the whimsical verse so much that other newspapers began circulating it too. As the poem took the country by storm, Clement Seymore remained quiet. It wasn't until eighteen thirty seven, a full fourteen years later, that the piece was formally attributed to him. It was featured in an anthology called The New York Book of Poetry and published under the professor's name. However, even back then, seeing people weren't sure

who penned those now famous lines. In eighteen forty three of Washington, DC newspaper attributed the poem to someone named Joseph Wood. Word got out about this to more, and in eighteen forty four he wrote a letter to the editors correcting their mistake. He said he had written the poem and I quote not for publication, but to amuse

my children. Whatever his original intention was, Clement Seymour now wanted credit for his work, except sometime in the late eighteen forties, a woman claimed that it wasn't his at all. She said her father, Henry Livingstone, had penned the poem in eighteen oh eight. However, by the time she was saying all of this, Livingston was dead. He'd never publicly claimed to have written the piece, and there was no

proof to back up the idea that he had. Not until later, one hundred and fifty years later to be exact. You see, in nineteen ninety nine, Henry Livingston's descendants were still arguing that he was the poem's true author, and they went to a surprising person for help proving it too. Don Foster, a forensic writing analyst best known for his work on the Unibomber case, and for Don the mystery ended up being far more intriguing than he ever anticipated.

He wrote an entire book called Author Unknown, in which he argued that Clement C. Moore absolutely could not have written a Visit from Saint Nicholas. According to Don, there were aspects of the writing that made Henry Livingston the more likely author. For example, Livingston often wrote poems in anapestic meter, which means two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. That's the same meter a Visit from Saint Nicholas was written in, and it's also one that Clement C.

Moore almost never wrote. There was also the matter of the reindeer. In the original version of the poem, Donner and Blitzen are named dunder and Blixom, which are the Dutch words for thunder and lightning. Livingston spoke Dutch, Moore did not. And aside from all this text based evidence, Don Foster also got a little personal. He claimed that, based on his research, Clement C. Moore was a haughty,

high strung man who hated children. The idea that he would write such a jaunty holiday verse for his kids was simply out of the question. Now, since Don Foster published his book, others have come forward arguing against his evidence. Just because More rarely wrote an anapestic meter doesn't mean that he never did. Moore had friends who spoke Dutch, so he might have picked up some words, and the attacks on his character were, according to many historians, wholly unfounded.

Wherever the truth lies, one thing is certain, twas the Night Before Christmas is one of the most recognizable lines in American poetry. It played a big role in making Christmas what it is today. Before A Visit from Saint Nicholas was published, Santa Claus as we know him didn't really exist. The legend of a jolly old man who sneaks into your house through the chimney carrying a bag full of presents originated with the poem, and still we don't know for sure who the poem's author was, and

that certainly makes for a very curious Christmas. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Q Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore

dot com. And until next time, stay curious.