The Night Before Christmas appealed to Tasha Tudor just as it does to hosts of other people.   But interpreted through Tudor's creative genius, the book takes on a new veracity.  These fantastic events could happen in anyone's home.    Tudor illustrated the poem five times in six books.  Each treatment conveys an old-time homeliness: snow on the ground, and a house anticipating magic.
 
Her first illustrations were for My Brimful Book,  Platt & Munk (1960).  A 2-page (22-23) layout displays "A Visit from St. Nicholas" across a blue background.    A twig border laden with greens, gifts and food encloses both pages.  The McCready family's restored Georgian home in Webster, NH, is also featured.
 
The Worcester, MA, miniaturist Achille St. Onge published a second appearance as The Night Before Christmas (1962).   It was the first of two books on which Tudor and St. Onge collaborated and measures a little more than 3 ½" high.   There are four variant bindings.  One generally sees it in a red or deep wine leather.   Twelve hundred copies were bound in maroon cloth.  There are 22 watercolor illustrations in 36 pages.   Tudor dedicated the book to her Pennsylvania patron E.B.H. [Edward B. Hills] who was also her model for Santa in the illustrations. You first encounter him on the front cover - see above.  The Webster house is in two illustrations.
 
The third appearance is spread across just two pages (58 and 59) of Take Joy! The Tasha Tudor Christmas Book, World (1966).    There are only 2 illustrations, and both of them were previously published in the St. Onge publication.   There are at least 28 printings of this title from 3 publishers.  Dust jackets, blue or white.
 
The fourth appearance accompanies the poem in Favorite Poems of Childhood  (pages 42-45) Platt & Munk (1967).  There are new illustrations, still reflective of those we saw in the St. Onge version.   An elaborate watercolor border shows a bedroom with an anthropomorphic squirrel in bed rather than a person.   Stockings are hung below a heavy pewter candle stick on a mantle.  Two pencil illustrations show Santa busy filling a stocking, and the Webster, NH, house in the moonlight sitting solidly beside Tyler Road.   Look especially at the andirons drawn into this fireplace scene.   You can see them for sale by a family member on our web site today.   As well, you can see it in the St. Onge book.
 
Dorothy Haas, edited at Rand McNally in Chicago, and was responsible for the fifth appearance of the poem with Tasha Tudor illustrations.  Her essay in Tasha Tudor: The Direction of her Dreams relates how this book-length version came about.   She first wrote to Tudor in May 1973. Their successful endeavour took a year and a half to produce a 60-page book published  August 1, 1975.  It was a standard in bookstores for almost 20 years. This Night Before Christmas is a large format 12" x 9" book perfect for night-time reading to small children.  Each two page spread alternates between black and white pencil drawings, and watercolor illustrations.  You may have seen some of the originals in the Norman Rockwell Museum traveling exhibit in recent years.
 
Working with Haas, Tasha Tudor gave us a first view of her new "old" house in Vermont - see below. The house is fully realized with barns and out-buildings on the last four pages of the book.   Only the trees and flower gardens are smaller than we would later see them in Richard Brown's photo books of the 1990s.  

                                                          Rand McNally, 1975

The Rand McNally version of the story was reprinted at least 18 times.   It originally had white board covers.  Later printings change to red boards, and then move to the publishers Macmillan and Checkerboard.   Simon & Schuster reprinted it as recently as 1997 with green cloth covers.   Their printing plates were based on a book Tudor had signed.  Consequently, all the Simon & Schuster  copies appear to have been signed on the front free endpaper.   But this a printed signature, and not an original by Tudor.
 
Still working in her eighties, Tudor produced one more set of new paintings for The Night Before Christmas which Little, Brown published September 1, 1999. We call this the "starry starry night" version.  Each page is a beautifully realized oval watercolor set against a star-studded sky of the deepest blue color.   This is a late book.  Tudor used the white chalk outlining to good effect, and no so heavily as would later be seen in Corgiville Christmas. 
 
The andirons have changed, and the stockings are smaller.    Corgis are prominent, people less so.  This is a lovely version and a fitting swan song.   It has already been through at least 7 reprintings.   It is a large format book in which young children can loose themselves on the night before St. Nicholas' visit.  Make this your own family heirloom and a fitting reminded of Tasha Tudor's mastery of her pallette.