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From: <>
Subject: [NYSUFFOL] Stories
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:45:37 EST

Flora & Suffolk-Rootsers, etc.


Does your invitation to " ... (S)hare a Christmas wish or story on the
Suffolk List and maybe lets have a roll call ... " include non-Christians who
have their Holy Days and Festival Days at other times than do Christians
(i.e., Ramadan, which will occur shortly, and Rosh ha Shannah, which has
already occurred, etc., etc.) and do not celebrate Christmas? (Chanukah is
available at this time of the year, but in all honesty it is not a Jew's
Christmas, as it actually commemorates the opposite of what Christmas
celebrates.)

Is this a new tradition -- in my younger days the merchandising of Christmas
did not begin until the day after Thanksgiving, not the day after All Saints
Day.

But, if you wish a LI Christmas connection, that's just a county away in
Nassau:


The following is from NEWSDAY's LI Life Section of Sunday, December 20, 1998:

TIME MACHINE / A Weekly Series Picturing the Past / A Poetic
Christmas Connection

WHAT'S IN a name? When it's Chelsea - as in the Muttontown mansion
that now houses the Nassau County Office of Cultural Development -
it's a link to one of the most famous Christmas poems, the one known to
generations as " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."
The poem, titled "A Visit From St. Nicholas," was written in 1822 by
Clement Clarke Moore, a scholar in Hebrew and the son of an Episcopal
bishop. Moore's family had come to America in 1750 from Chelsea,
England, and established a farm named Chelsea in the area of Manhattan
still known by that name.
Moore had not intended for the poem to be published, but a young
relative copied it into her diary and her father sent it to a newspaper
in upstate Troy. After it was published in the paper, it became a
classic, and was reprinted in book form.
The North Shore mansion, named for the family roots, was built as a
summer home in 1924 for Benjamin Moore, the great-great-grandson of
Clement Clarke Moore, and his wife, Alexandra. The grounds include
paving blocks taken from the original pavement of West 23rd Street in
Manhattan's Chelsea.
Benjamin Moore died of a heart ailment in 1938. His wife, who
remarried, continued to live in Chelsea until her death in 1983, at age
89. The county took it over a year later. Although the building is
decorated modestly each year for the holiday season, there is little to
remind visitors of its familial connection to that famous poem written
nearly 180 years ago.

Copyright 1998, Newsday Inc.

TIME MACHINE / A Weekly Series Picturing the Past / A Poetic Christmas
Connection., pp G27.


I can add: Muttontown is a village in the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau
County.

I hope this was "seasonally" interesting to those of my friends that are
preparing to celebrate the December 25th holy day.


Regards,

Walter Greenspan

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