Happiness Quote by Clement Clarke Moore

Moore draws Santa with the shrewd economy of a caricaturist: two body parts, one simile, and suddenly you can see him. The “broad face” signals openness and easy cheer, but the real move is the “little round belly” that “shook” when he laughed. Santa’s joy isn’t elegant or restrained; it’s physical, contagious, a whole-body phenomenon. The line makes laughter measurable, almost edible, turning mirth into something you could tap with a spoon.

“Like a bowlful of jelly” is doing cultural work. Jelly is domestic, sweet, and child-friendly; it belongs in the kitchen, not the cathedral. Moore’s Santa is less a stern saint than a cozy household spirit, designed to be welcomed rather than feared. That matters in early-19th-century America, when Christmas was still negotiating its identity between religious observance, rowdy street revelry, and the emerging middle-class ideal of family-centered celebration. The poem (first published in 1823) helps relocate the holiday indoors and onto the hearth, where comfort, not doctrine, sets the mood.

There’s also a subtle class and temperament cue: “little round” reads as well-fed, prosperous, safe. This Santa has enough to give because he has enough to eat. The jelly simile softens any hint of excess into something comic and harmless, turning corpulence into charm. Moore isn’t merely describing a man; he’s engineering a myth that feels nonthreatening, affectionate, and repeatable - a figure built for memory, merchandising, and ritual long before those words became the point.