Stan Lee Reads “The Night Before Christmas,” Telling the Tale of Santa Claus, the Greatest of Super Heroes

“He would turn over in his grave if he knew I’m about to read this,” says Stan Lee, Mar­vel Comics’ grand poo-bah, before launch­ing into Clement Clarke Moore’s “The Night Before Christ­mas.” Moore’s 1823 poem helped solid­i­fy var­i­ous ideas about San­ta Claus and Christ­mas, espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca, much like Lee and his co-cre­ators forged the mut­li-char­ac­ter Mar­vel Uni­verse that now dom­i­nates 21st cen­tu­ry mythol­o­gy.

So who bet­ter to read the ori­gin sto­ry of this cos­tumed super­hero than Stan the Man? Because we’re talk­ing about Good St. Nick, a beloved non-human who is able to tra­verse the earth in the span of one night, squeeze down chim­neys with­out get­ting stuck, burned, or even dirty­ing his clothes, gives presents freely, and whose sled is pow­ered pure­ly by mag­i­cal rein­deer, all with their own names. Plus he lives in a fortress of toy­mak­ing qua­si-soli­tude at the North Pole.

Lee real­ly gets into the car­ni­val bark­er style in his read­ing from 2009, much like his own over­heat­ed prose in the pages of his comics. You can still hear the busy pulse of his native Man­hat­tan in that grav­el­ly voice. And if you’re won­der­ing if Lee puts his own spin on things, wait till the end.

And for those look­ing for more Stan Lee Read­ing the Clas­sics, here he is read­ing Poe’s “The Raven.”

You’ll find both­er read­ings in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

15-Year-Old George R.R. Mar­tin Writes a Fan Let­ter to Stan Lee & Jack Kir­by (1963)

X‑Men: Sci­ence Can Build Them, But Is It Eth­i­cal?

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.