From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
“’Twas the night before Chirstmas and all through the house,
Not a Creature was stirring,
Not Even a mouse.”Only it isn’t night yet, and everything is stirring and it is all so exciting. This morning Alma and I filled all the cookie cans and wrapped all the presents, and then we walked to the post office and sent Tom and Jerry’s dog biscuits. I wrote out the address myself:
Messieurs Tom and Jerry
c/o Mr. Thomas Nolan
P.O. Box 44
Glenn Ellen, CaliforniaI pasted Santa Clauses and wreathes and candles all over the package and I hope Mr. Nolan lets them chew it open and they will have fun tearing it up to get to the biscuits. I wrote a note for Mr. Nolan and wished him a Merry Christmas and asked him to tie the ribbons on Tom and Jerry’s collars so they will look all dressed up. I told him that Uncle Milton will bring me up soon and that I was looking forward to it.
I skipped most of the way home. I am so excited. Uncle Milton is here now in our parlor and I am not allowed to go in, so I guess he’s trimming the tree. Everyone is coming to dinner tonight and I may stay up as long as I please. I’d like to go to church with Alma at midnight but Grandmother says that it’s too long but that I can sometime when I’m older. It is four in the afternoon now. The house smells like roast turkey and Christmas trees mixed together. Alma is allowing me to hang one of her stockings at the fireplace tonight but I will put my name on it. It holds more than mine. I have a special Christmas dress to wear at the table. Aunt Tillie made it for me. It is white with bunches of holly berries all over it and I am going to wear a red hair ribbon, and I have enough ribbon so that I am putting bows on Sherry’s and Brownie’s collars.
Clement Clarke Moore’s poem was already almost 90 years old when Hilda wrote this – it was originally published anonymously in 1823. According to a Celadon Books essay entitled “6 Things You Didn’t Know About “The Night Before Christmas”, Moore wrote it for his children in 1822 — so we read this on the poem’s 200th anniversary.