By Clement C. Moore
The 1823 poem behind almost everything we picture about Santa, from the eight reindeer's names to the finger laid beside his nose. Families have said it aloud on Christmas Eve for two hundred years.
It's the night before Christmas, the house is quiet, and a father wakes to a clatter out on the lawn. He looks out and sees a tiny sleigh and eight reindeer, and then St. Nicholas himself, a round and jolly man in red, landing on the roof and coming down the chimney to fill the stockings. He works away without a word, gives a wink, lays a finger beside his nose, and is gone up the chimney and off into the sky, calling 'Happy Christmas to all' as he flies. That's the whole poem, and it's where nearly everything we picture about Santa Claus first came from.
This is the one a lot of families read on the actual night, and it earns the spot. It's short, it rhymes, and it does what Christmas Eve wants from a book: a little wonder, a warm room, and everyone drifting off to sleep. Because it's a poem, your child soaks it up over a few Decembers until they're saying the words along with you, and that's when it stops being just a book and becomes a tradition. The one real choice is the pictures. The words are always the same, so pick an edition whose art you won't mind looking at every year.