Santa Kicks A Bad Habit

finally a book worth peeing on

After 200 years, Santa Kicks A Bad Habit: Publisher, Activist Edit Twas The Night Before Christmas, Take Away St. Nick’s Pipe



A new, bowdlerized edition of Twas The Night Before Christmas that pulls the pipe from Santa’s mouth and drops all references to his smoking habit has sparked a backlash in Canada and reopened debate over whether it’s acceptable to apply modern mores to classics written in a different time.

Late last year, Canadian independent publisher and smoking cessation advocate Pamela McColl decided to “update” the nearly 200-year-old poem by deleting mention of the stump of his pipe and the wreath of smoke around his head — a move she hopes will deter children from picking up a pack.

The cover of the book, published this month by Grafton and Scratch and, according to Ms. McColl, picked up this week by Indigo booksellers, proclaims to have been “edited by Santa Claus for the benefit of children of the 21st century.”

Parents, Ms. McColl said, have been tearing the smoking-related pages out of their books or have had to console teary-eyed children who see Santa’s pipe and think he’s going to die as a result of his habit.
HandoutTwas the Night Before Christmas with edits "by Santa Claus for the benefit of children in the 21st century."

“Wouldn’t it be sad if we saw a poem that’s so incredibly influential in our celebration of Christmas cast aside because we didn’t make a simple edit and took out a simple verse that’s offensive to modern children?” she said.

Other classics have been updated to fit the modern times — the man in the yellow hat from Curious George doesn’t smoke anymore, she said.

“I had someone say to me ‘You can’t do that, he’s an historical figure,’ and I said ‘Santa is not a historical figure to a five-year-old. He’s literally a real guy smoking in their living room.’”

But her nicotine-free Saint Nick has been met with criticism, the publisher plied with accusations of over-the-top political correctness and blatant mucking about with Clement C. Moore’s intended depictions of Santa. Others worry that such a brash tweaking of the poem will mean children miss out on historical learning opportunities and water down a treasured and iconic piece of literature.

“I think it’s dreadful,” said Ann Curry, a professor at the University of Alberta who has researched censorship in children’s books.

Her colleague, Gail de Vos, an adjunct instructor in Canadian children’s literature and storytelling at UofA, received a copy to review.

“Although it’s now in the public domain, there’s something disturbing about modifying a classic,” Ms. de Vos said. “What about those children who never get to hear the real thing? What if they become an adult and find out Santa used to be a smoker?”

The American Library Association and other literary advocacy organizations are wholly opposed to “expurgation” or taking references out of books that may now be deemed vulgar or offensive, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“So much of censorship is motivated on the grounds that we’re protecting children from concepts someone finds distasteful. But there’s many assumptions behind that — that one point is the correct viewpoint, that all parents buy into the same ideas. The bottom line is we’re denying access to the author’s original voice, denying the opportunity for the author’s voice to be heard.”

Last year, the literary world was up in arms after an Alabama publishing house announced it would issue an updated version of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, replacing the word “nigger” with “slave,” and expunging the word “Injun.”

“The end result was putting out an edition that denied access to [Mark] Twain’s original work,” said Ms. Caldwell-Stone. Grafton and Scratch’s rewriting of Twas The Night Before Christmas “may not be seen in the same light as rewriting Huckleberry Finn to take out the n word, but for all intents and purposes it’s the same act.”

Santa was intended as a fantasy, not a role model — a perfect human being after whom children should model their behaviour, said Alvin Schrader, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and convenor of the Canadian Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Advisory Committee. Plus, the tale of the jolly old elf wasn’t written with solely children in mind.

“[Santa] doesn’t go around killing kids. He doesn’t leave them bombs. I just think starting to rewrite and revise all of our history leads to something even more meaningless than even Disney,” he said.