{"id":42034,"date":"2015-12-15T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.com\/?p=42034"},"modified":"2018-01-04T10:49:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T15:49:45","slug":"uncommon-knowledge-was-the-night-before-christmas-a-shuttered-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/2015\/uncommon-knowledge-was-the-night-before-christmas-a-shuttered-affair\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Knowledge: Was the Night Before Christmas a Shuttered Affair?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/product\/north-pole-dish-towel?source=blog_uk121515\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-42062 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/uk_272701.jpg\" alt=\"North Pole Dish Towel | UncommonGoods\" width=\"616\" height=\"620\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house\u2026<\/em>Clements Moore\u2019s classic poem, \u201cA Visit from St. Nicholas\u201d paints a picture of a holiday house as quaint as a Currier and Ives scene. But have you ever wondered\u00a0<em>what<\/em> house might have inspired the setting? The poem actually offers a clue in its description of the window treatment, of all things:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Away to the window I flew like a flash,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hold on, Santa\u2014shutters and <em>then<\/em> sash? That means the shutters in this house are on the inside. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.historicnewengland.org\/publications\/historic-new-england-magazine\/winter-spring-2004\/2004WinterSpringPage07.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Shutters, both exterior and interior,<\/a> were common in early nineteenth century houses when the poem debuted, but the interior shutters suggest one mansion in particular: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.constablehall.org\/facts.php\" target=\"_blank\">Constable Hall <\/a>in Northern New York. Turns out that Moore was a cousin of the lady of the house, Mary Eliza Constable, and he visited her there. So Constable Hall is a likely candidate for the house St. Nicholas visited that snowy Christmas Eve. But to be fair, in the days before <a href=\"http:\/\/www.noradsanta.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Santa Tracker,<\/a> his route was anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"North Pole Dish Towel | UncommonGoods\" href=\"http:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/product\/north-pole-dish-towel?source=blog_uk121515\" target=\"_blank\">North Pole Dish Towel<\/a> | $20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who knew that the night before Christmas was such an essay on early 19th century window treatments? The 242 residents of Constableville, NY, that&#8217;s who.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":42038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1208],"tags":[258,252,621,813],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42034"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42063,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42034\/revisions\/42063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}