The famous words "'Twas the night before Christmas" shaped the holiday by popularizing stockings, reindeer, and even Santa Claus. But the classic poem also sparked a centuries-long controversy. Now, ...

It is one of the most famous poems in the English language—almost as famous as Christmas itself. A single word is enough to get going: “‘Twas”. You know the rest, or probably quite a bit of it.

First published in the Virginia Quarterly Review in 1928, today’s poem by Robert Frost (1874–1963) takes up the dark undercurrent hinted at in his famous 1923 poem, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy ...