Great stuff, Sampiro. If you ever finish the Tennessee Williams*, could you favor us with Truman Capote?
*assuming the TBC wasn’t a tease, along the lines of Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part II.
Philip Larkin:
They fuck you up, the Christmas Ghosts;
They never mean to, but they do.
They show you all the shit you did
And all the shit you’re going to do.
But they’re as fucked up as they come;
They talk of some big Christmas plan -
Well, you can shove it up your arse
'Cos he’s a piece of shit, is Man.
Fuck Christmas pudding, Christmas goose;
Fuck Scrooge’s nephew Freddie too.
Fuck all the Cratchit family
And Tiny Tim says “God bless[sup]*[/sup] you!”
- Here Larkin’s pen blotted, and the editor has interpolated as seemed best.
I have no idea who Philip Larkin is but the last part still explains it all! L
This should explain even more. 
This one was meant to be fluffy but for some reason turned really dark and Gothic; c’est la vie.
**ALL DISCLAIMERS IN PLACE ABOUT COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND PARODY PROTECTION IN PLACE (less the litigious Clan Mitchell get ideas)
**
*Scarlett is bitching to the Spirit of Christmas Past *
“…and stands at the foot of my bed saying in some garish accent or other ‘I’m your grandmother Solange Robillard and like you a thrice married beautiful schemer who’d do anything to make a sou, and I’m here to show you your errors”. ‘Well if I have any errors, supposed Grandmother Robillard’ I said, ‘I don’t think you could show me what they are thank you very much! But thank you for at least saying I’m beautiful’, though I don’t mind telling you if I’d had my calvary pistol there would have been much spirit on the wall! I don’t even think she was my Grandmother Robillard! Grandmother Robillard could not be in Limbo, Mother paid upwards of two hundred bales of cotton for masses to ensure she makes Purgatory! And even if she was she has no business…”
Spirit of Christmas Past (SPC) Oh for the love of St. Michael, St. Patrick, and the Virgin Mother would you please shut up child! Do you never look around you? LOOK! Does this place look familiar?
[It does]
**SCARLETT ** Why… it’s Tara! Or… it looks like Tara… but it doesn’t… and there are the turkeys in the yard again! But Tara’s so much bigger…
**SCP **It wasn’t always. And if you would notice, there are additions going on all around you…
SCARLETT Yes…. But there hasn’t been an addition to Tara since I was a girl…
SCP And who are the three little girls on the porch?
SCARLETT They must be Suellen and Will’s bec… no, Suellen never had a girl as pretty as those… they do look familiar…
**[Little Girls on porch]**Suellen give me that back! NO! Scarlett you’re evil! WAAAAAAA!!! PA! MA!
A black nurse with a baby at her breast sits in a peacock chair behind them, both nursing a child and sleeping. An Irish Brogue roars from inside the house- “GIRLS!”
Gerald O’Hara, looking much younger than at the opening of GWTW, steps onto the porch
**GERALD **Girls! I’ll not have ye carryin’ on like the daughters of Mab instead of the daughters of a respectable folk! Why look at the Slattery’s, they’re poor as church mice and their old man’s here to beg bacon and there they are puttin’ their betters to shame!
Emmy Slattery and several of her brothers and sisters are in a wagon in the yard, all of them skinny and ragged and the two youngest ones naked in spite of the cold. They’re eyeing Scarlett and Suellen’s china dolls and dresses as one would eye a suitcase of hundred dollar bills you know you can’t have. Neither the 1850 Scarlett nor the 1870s Scarlett notice them though.
1870S SCARLETT Pa! Oh Pa!
*
Runs to him, throws her arms around him, and they go through him.*
SCP He can neither hear nor see nor touch you. You are seeing the past.
**SCARLETT ** PA! PA!
CHILD SCARLETT Pa! She started it!
**SUELLEN ** I did not! She tried to take my Christmas dolly because she said it’s got a prettier dres…
CHILD SCARLETT It is prettier and that’s unfair! It’s why I should have it!
They fight, and Scarlett slugs Suellen with her own China doll until Gerald pulls her up by her arm
GERALD Katie Scarlett were it not our Lord’s birthday I’d give you three stripes I swear it! MAMMY! Get out here and tend to this child!
Mammy comes onto the porch
**SCARLETT ** Mammy! Lord, she was young! Look how fast she could move!
SCP It’s not only age that makes her move slow now but misery in her back. Only you never notice because…
SCARLETT Shut up you fool! I want to hear Pa and Mammy when she was younger talk…
**MAMMY ** Miz Scarlett, I done told ya, I am tryin’ to help your Mama whose laid up with your baby brother or sister and cain’t be bothered. If Mistuh Gerald won’t whip you on Christmas I sho nuff will!
She does so until Scarlett is screaming bloody murder; the Slattery children are laughing
MAMMY Shut up trash or I’ll come after you next!
**GERALD **Indeed she will if I don’t take after you myself with a shilleleagh, your Pa comin’ up to beg bacon when he knows Mrs. O’Hara’s ill. I hope Polk takes all day in takin’ him to the smokehouse and when he gets there there’s nothin’ but rotten ends. And what’s that gal doin’ sleepin’? Bathsheba! Wake up!
Gerald walks to the sleeping slave and slaps her violently
**BATHSHEBA ** Oh… I’m sorry Mistuh Gerald… I dozed off… twixt this baby and my baby and Mrs. O’Hara callin’ I hadn’t slept in two days…
GERALD You’ll have time to sleep when your boat’s going down the river when I sell you to the Barbados ye will if ye e’er fall asleep with one of my babies again! And if tweren’t Our Lord’s birthday I’d give you nine stripes me’self and I might anyway! You hear me!
BATSHEBA Yessuh! I’se sorry suh! I’se sorry suh, it woan happen again…
MAMMY She tellin’ the truth Mistuh Gerald, she ain’t had e’en a minute to sleep…
GERALD I’ll not be hearin’ sass! Don’t think you’re too high and mighty to get a lick yourself Mammy! If I have to show you who’s the master here I will don’t be thinkin’ I want! Perhaps she’d like me to ease her responsibilities by sellin’ her baby to the Wilkes or the Fontaines, how bout that!
BATHSHEBA No suh! NO please! I’ll stay awake!
GERALD See that ya do! And girls play nice!
MAMMY Yessuh, I sho is sorry… Now Miz Scarlett, you and Suellen and Miz Careen settle back heah and play nice…
The girls do settle down, Careen in Mammy’s lap and the others at her side on the porch.
**SCARLETT ** Oh, those were such happy wonderful carefree days.
SCP Were they? Do you think Bathsheba thought so? Or Mammy?
Mammy and Bathsheba are exchanging glances that speak dialogues. *
**
SCARLETT* Whatever do you mean? This is before the war… they didn’t have to worry about anything. Their food, their shelter, their clothing, all taken care of…
SCP And if it meant an occasional beating or threat of having a child sold…
**SCARLETT **Oh Pa would never sell her baby, she knows that!
SCP Does she? And what about her husband, what happened to him?
SCARLETT Had she a husband? Oh yes… Reston I think… or Roy… I couldn’t keep the field hands straight. I think the Pa traded him to the Tarletons for that bay mare.
**SCP **Do you realize some women actually want their husbands near them? And that…
**SCARLETT **Oh just hush! Her husband was hardly a baby at the time, and she still got to see him! Christmases, Easters, sometimes the Tarletons would even give him a pass to come to Tara.
[Gerald comes back onto the porch carrying a platter of cakes, cookies, and sweets]
GERALD Now then girls, I’m properly chastened by your dear mother for raisin’ my voice on a Christmas! You girls have all you want of these sweets, eat so much you get a tummy ache and I’ll not say a word about it I swear it! But tomorrow, back to moderation… Here you go pusses… and be sure to let Mammy have one…
MAMMY Thank you suh! She beams, a smile that disappears the nanosecond he leaves the porch
The Slattery children, admiring but not envious of the dolls they know their pa could never buy them, are far more attentive now, for there are plenty of cakes and cookies and there’s a chance they might get one of them. Emmy is licking her lips, and the little ones have to be restrained from going to the porch to get some
**LITTLE SCARLETT ** M…mmmmm…mmm… [mouth full] These are so delicious! I love these! No Carreen! I want the one with the pecans!
SUELLEN Scarlett you’re being a hog! Let me and Carreen get some of the frosting cake…
**MAMMY **Chillen! Don’t you dare make your Daddy come back out on this porch or I will wear yo little behine’s out! Each and ever one of ya I swear it!
**LITTLE SCARLETT ** Now Mammy darling…
**MAMMY **[mocking]now Mammy darling[/mocking] You ain’t foolin’ me, you got the devil behin’ that angel smile! Heah… give me that cookie there… and this one o’er here… And Miz Careen, you take this cookie over there to Bathsheba and your brother…
BATHSHEBA [crying and meekly] Thank you Miss Careen. [puts the cookie in her pocket for later]
**MAMMY ** Hmmph. Lawd work in the mysterious way. Gotta be some sense to it.
*
[One of the youngest Slattery children runs onto the porch and tries to snatch a cookie and LITTLE SCARLETT slaps him hard with her China doll; he runs back screaming, while Suellen snatches a mint cookie] *
SCARLETT Oh my God I’d forgotten that! I remember it now! That’s the most inconsiderate and hateful thing I ever saw… I can’t believe it happened!
**SCP **Indeed, I can. Though I am surprised that you saw it.
SCARLETT Oh yes spirit, I did, I really did. Suellen snatched that pecan cookie right out from under me when I was fighting off the Slattery brat! She only took it because she heard me tell Careen I wanted it! Suellen didn’t even like pecans! She just never could stand to see me have anything that might be better than what she had…
**SCP **Mmmm. Frank Kennedy may have found that ironic.
SCARLETT You give poor old Frank more credit than I did…
SCP That I do not doubt.
**MAMMY **[eyeballing the silent Slatterys] Well, at least you work in the house you gets good enough to eat. Thankful for that I s’pose. Lawd Lawd I do not understan’ your ways.
GERALD comes back onto the porch and smiles.
GERALD Now then, and that’s more like it. This is what I like at Tara. Peace and happiness. [stern again] Bathsheba, you’ll be stayin’ awake now I s’pose? That’s not a rag doll or a kitten you’re holding but the new master of Tara, your future master!
BATHSHEBA Yessuh Mistuh Gerald… I’se wide awake…
**GERALD ** For I mean it I do and did, if need be I’ll arranged for ya to have but one baby to take care of, just one…
*He gives her a stern look, then softens, pats her cheek as a sign of forgiveness leans down and kisses his son, Bathsheba saying nothing and looking down at the floor. *
GERALD There now, it’s Christmas, bygones be bygones… Bathsheba have yourself a cookie! Let’s all have a Merry Christmas! As soon as the Slatterys are gone we’ll be eatin’ the biggest turkey ya ever saw!
BATHSHEBA Yessuh… yessuh…
Bathsheba resumes humming. With eyes somewhere between dead, exhausted, and feral she looks at the white baby boy in her arms
BATHSHEBA Need be, perhaps it can be arranged fo’ me to have to take care just one…
MAMMY jerks her head and casts a suspicious and warning glance to BATHSHEB, who glances back. Bathsheba begins humming again, nursing the baby boy. A tense moment. Mammy realizes Bathsheba is seeing reason and she joins her in the humming. The girls are soon playing quietly.
SCARLETT You see? There was sometimes squawking, but it was the happiest place on Earth otherwise… what’s happening?
A wind is blowing and with it goes most of the scene; the wind seems to add rooms onto the house, then age them, then give the entire place a terrible battered look. TARA after Sherman, Christmas 1864.
SCARLETT Spirit take me away. I don’t need to see anything else. I do not need to see anything…Take me away now!
[Twenty year old SCARLETT in rags, as is everyone else. She and her sisters and Gerald, now demented, are saying grace around the Christmas feast, which consists of a single shoat and a small rabbit both stewed with dried beans and some wild corn and for dessert a tin cup of berries, enough in all for perhaps two people but there are many- white, black, adult, child, all ragged, all starving. The slaves are on their knees, apart from the family, but eyeing the “feast” rather than praying. There are audible stomach grumblings from several during the prayers. This is the most food there has been in weeks and none will be left satisfied, let alone full.
1870S SCARLETT No! I won’t! I don’t want to see it I don’t want to see it leave me alone!
*SCARLETT runs from the scene, through walls and through trees and through the remains of an outbuilding. When the SPC appears behind her SCARLETT is in the family cemetery crying. *
**SPC **I believe you need to see that. Perhaps you can learn something from it that you can’t from the first…
**SCARLETT **Oh I have… I remember the lesson… money is the most important thing there is…
**SPC **Really? Girl, of the things you have seen today, is it the money you would have back?
SCARLETT Yes! The money! And Pa! And Mother! But I can’t have them back no matter how much money I have! So it’s important I have as much money as possible! There can never be enough!
**SPC ** Whose grave is that Scarlett?
**SCARLETT ** I don’t know, … oh… Gerald O’Hara, Jr., the first one. 1851. And the other ones. 1852 and 1855. The three little boys. We never did know what was causing them to die… Poor Bathsheba, she loved them so… two of them died in her arms… it drove her absolutely mad… the only slave at Tara ever to take her own life.
SPC She did indeed go mad, didn’t she? Do you think the happiness of that last Christmas was no comfort to her?
**SCARLETT **I never gave the matter any thought one way or the other.
**SPC ** Of that I have no doubt. Do you realize Scarlett that our actions have consequences? That sometimes the consequences are even far in excess of what is warranted? That desperation can cause a person to use a sledgehammer to crush a roach? And that sometimes it is the innocent, the completely innocent, who end up suffering the most for our own lack of compassion and our own selfishness and our lack of seeing others as beings no less precious than ourselves?
**SCARLETT ** Oh I know actions have consequences, rest assured. That’s what heaven and hell are for…
**SPC **In part… but only in part…
**SCARLETT **And that’s why I say my prayers and my rosaries every day and it’s why I’ll do anything I can to get as much money as I can, because money is the one thing that will save you from a terrible consequence. Like Mother paying for the sisters to say all those masses for Grandma Robillard…
SPC Scarlett my dear child, do you remember when I said that the people you see cannot see or hear or touch you?
SCARLETT Of course I do…
**SPC ** Well Scarlett, my dear… I can do all three.
SPC smiles sweetly, and then slaps Scarlett with a ferocity you’d never think anyone short of a prize fighter could manage, making full contact with Scarlett’s face and causing her to scream.
SCARLETT Aaaaaaaaah!
Scarlett bolts up in her curtained bed in her cavernous bedchamber of her Atlanta mansion
SCARLETT A nightmare! It… Bathsheba! Baby Gerald and Pa… oh… it was a dream. A silly dream. Damn Rhett for locking up the brandy and just leaving that absinthe. What was the baby and the Slattery child an… did I even think they might want a cookie… oh well… it was a long time ago and no undoing it now. I’ll think about it tomorrow… no I won’t, I have enough to do tomorrow with the Christmas Banquet for the Yankees and the Republicans… well… I can’t be that wide awake, I’ll just go back to sleep…
Whoa. Dark is right, man.
I don’t know what you have in the works, but put me down for two copies of your first novel.
Scroogie, the well known miser
Had a very tight closed purse.
And all the other merchants
Knew that there was no one worse.
All of these other merchants
Use to laugh at all his gold.
They didn’t like to do trades with Scroogie,
He was so alone and old.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Three ghosts came to say:
Scroogie, if you don’t change your ways,
You’ll regret it when you end your days.
Then how the Crachitts loved him.
As they shouted out in glee.
Scroogie, you’re quite the dickens,
You’ll go down in history.
My biggest Resolutions for 2009 being “completion and organization” (I’ll stop smoking and lose weight when I stop smoking and lose weight), I finished, as a matter of principle, the GWTW Christmas Carol. I won’t post it here because
1- It’s VERY long
2- It’s only of interest to die hard GWTW buffs and perhaps film/Southern history/genealogy buffs (the ending is a long tongue-in-cheek sequence for genealogists)
3- I’m pretty sure it’s of a length to be copyright infringing
4- It has much to do with the “unauthorized sequel” I’ve been planning to write for when the U.S. Copyright expires
but if anyone would like a copy, please email or PM me. (Since it’s heavily illustrated it works best if I can forward it in MS Word.)
And now, this thread gets packed away for another year with the rest of the Xmas stuff. Cheers!
And I hope to have done “The Ruba’iya’t of Aba Nazar” by then, too. 
And God Bless Us, Every One.
Hopefully this won’t qualify as a zombie thread since it’s seasonal, though I think like Jane Austen Christmas could use some zombies.
A BURN NOTICE CAROL
My name is Michael Weston. I used to be a spy til a burn notice went out, now I’m earning holiday money doing freelance work as the Ghost of Christmas Past. It’s a triangulation of haunting, which is the key. When you’re burned and having to haunt a miserly crimelord, you turn to anyone who’s still speaking to you- a friend who informs on you to other spirits…
SAM: You know Christmas spirits Mike, a bunch of bitchy little ghosts.
-A trigger happy ex-girlfriend-
FIONA: Why not just blow him up in his bed? That would definitely stop him from ruining people’s Christmases in the future.
-Your family… if you’re desperate.
MADELYN: Mike, promise you’re not going to be ballistic. You’re brother took the money he was supposed to go buy the prize turkey for the Cratchit’s with and lost it on a horse named Tiny Trots…
Episode- A C4 CAROL
Michael is in a time traveling Charger with Ebenezer Scrooge bound and gagged with duct tape in the trunk./
"Showing somebody their past in an effort to make them feel nostalgic and reflective may seem easy, but it’s not. Just think about your own…
{showing Scrooge his boyhood boarding school and pulling the duct tape from his mouth}
SCROOGE- AAAAAHHHHH! Wait, I know this place! I could walk it blindfolded!
That’s little Johnny… hey!!! And my sister… why don’t they wave back?
MICHAEL Because they can’t see or hear you or maybe they can and their parents have told them not to respond to weird old men in bed clothes calling to them. Either way SHUT THE HELL UP! And look over there- the kid who’s alone for Christmas… look familiar?
{to audience}
If you want the subject to feel all gooey inside then the secret is a lot like being a Hollywood filmmaker. The secret is all in the editing. Several things you must remember— Show them just enough to make them misty eyed, nothing more.
SCROOGE It’s me… my father wouldn’t let me come home…
MW: You want them to remember what it felt like to be alone for Christmas, show them just this much. Any more and they’ll remember that’s the Christmas holiday when they learned to masturbate and then they won’t particularly miss Christmas.
{Scrooge’s sister comes and invites him home because “Father’s ever so much nicer now” and Scrooge is overjoyed}
Show him how happy he was to come home, but only blip size. Don’t let it roll and certainly don’t speed it up. The point is to make him contrast how good it felt to go home and not be left alone, the last thing you want is to remind him that his stepmother caught him wanking in the butler’s pantry because he associated the smell of evergreen with self enjoyment, or the fact that this led to a fight in which his father hit him on the head with a pewter tankard and blurred the vision in his left eye or he’ll hate Christmas even more than before…
{Scrooge is now seeing the party at Fezziwig’s- “That’s Dick Wilkins, he followed me around like a puppy…”}
"Show him the dance sequence because everyone loves one, but not the next Christmas when Mrs. Fezziwig got drunk and insisted he “Call me Mary” then after rumballs insisted that he "get to feelin’ Mary if you want to keep working here’, or the one after that when Mr. Fezziwig’s Waterloo flashbacks caused him to mistake Scrooge for a Napoleonic soldier and open fire with an Enfield, or the one after that when the widowed Mrs. Fezziwig, now Mrs. Dick Wilkins, fired him for ‘not making Mary’ on Christmas. If he even looks like he might be thinking ahead, get him out of there quick…
{Scrooge is seeing his break-up with his fiancee}
“Hereagain, show him how heartbroken he was when he broke up that Christmas. DO NOT show him the argument before that when you learn that the reason she was saying gold was more important to him than her was because he was furious that she wanted a new carriage and horse after he’d spent a thousand guineas to bail her dad out of jail in that plot to blow up Big Ben, or how five minutes after mourning her he got a whiff of an evergreen bow and was happy as a monkey on LSD enjoying himself… and if it looks like he’s even thinking of going in that direction, end the visit and call the next spirit in Early.”
SAM I am the ghost of Christmas present. You’ve been unkind to my brothers and never helped them…
SCROOGE How many brothers do you have?
SAM What year is this?
SCROOGE It’s the year 2009…
SAM Then I have… let me see… 2009… I have two brothers. One’s a Bentley mechanic up in D.C. and the other one says he’s a high end antiques dealer but I suspect he’s really a CIA storefront. How many people can really make a living doing nothing but importing Wedgewood dachshunds after all? And don’t get me started on his ‘special assistant Abbie’, that man’s got al-Qaeda double agent turned Dahoum the Donkey boy fantasy written all over him and… oh, wait, where was I? Here, I’m supposed to give you a sip out of this…
SCROOGE What is it?
SAM The mojita of human kindness…
SCROOGE It’s empty…
SAM Well get in here sooner the next time and don’t ask me a bunch of stupid family questions that make me thirsty! Let’s go see the crippled kid, he’s supposed to make you feel weepy…
{At Cratchit/Tim’s}
SCROOGE Will the little boy live?
SAM Depends a lot on what kind of health reform package gets passed. The idealist part of me says 'yeah, he’ll finally be able to get quality healthcare in a timely manner without sending his mom and dad to the Section 8 Acres since somehow none of the $800 million for the SCROOGE AND MARLEY S&M BAILOUT- did you even think that one through? Managed to make its way to the healthcare subsidy you cheap old bastard, but what I worry about is the whole proviso about pre-existing conditions being…
SCROOGE Just tell me if the little boy will live?
SAM What do I look like, a pediatrician orthopedist who just happens to spend Christmas wearing robes and sipping mojitos? How the hell should I know? To my knowledge he’s apparently going to survive Christmas Eve since ‘duh’, this is Christmas Day we’re looking at, after that you wanna find out take him to a specialist you cheap bastard. Let’s go home.
SCROOGE Spirit, who is that under your robe…
SAM Your kids.
SCROOGE But I don’t have any…
SAM They are humanity’s kids… the boy is Ignorance and the Girl is… [Sam throws open his robe to reveal Audrey Landers about to give him a Christmas present]… Whooaaaa!!! Okay, somewhere you’ve got two kids Ignorance and Want, fear them both, boy the most, gotta go… FI!!! I’M LATE FOR A PARTY!
SCROOGE Of all the spirits, I fear you most…
FI Good choice. (Presses charger- explodes half of a street in London)
Now that he’s dead just redistribute his money through Barry, save 20% for expenses, 20% that Michael doesn’t need to know about, and we can still make the Tofu Turkey and Christmas ham pizza at Madelyn’s. Next!
As promised:
Awake! For Winter on the Shortest Day
Flings playful Snowballs bidding Care away,
And lo! the Beech-log on the Hearth ablaze
Bids us prepare to make the Yule-tide Gay.
You all did know how I - the Famous Grouse -
Divorced old Humbug Christmas from my House,
Banished all Joy and Merriment alike
And took the Daughter of the Mine to Spouse.
Come now, with Aba-Nazar by the Fire
Roast Chestnuts; Hark to Music of the Choir;
Make merry Christmas Feast, and listen well
To Song which should the Souls of Men inspire.
For when old Marley - Dead this Seven Year -
Did in my very Chamber chill appear
His Aspect stern, forbidding, wretched, lost,
My spirit filled with well-deserved fear.
How had I left my Fellow-Man in Need
As Marley in his turn, consumed by Greed,
And cursed thereby to wander all the Earth
In Ghastly Shape - his warning I should heed -
And Spirits Three that night should Entertain
And well should List to, heedless of the Pain,
Of Present, Past and Future to Discern
And learn a Lesson greatly to my Gain.
Came Christmas Past, ablaze like Candle-Light,
The first of three great Spirits in one night
And led me miles and years and years away
Bringing my Boyhood Days before my sight.
As Schoolboy lone in School-House empty Sate
While Fellows all departed by the Gate
Yelling with glee, their Holiday begun,
But Merry Christmas was not Scrooge’s Fate.
By his own Sire rejected and forgot,
Of pity and of comfort not one spot,
Joyless was Aba-Nazar left alone
And comfortless and heavy was his lot.
Yet grown to hearty Stripling merry made
With Fezziweg his Master’s table laid
For Christmas Feast for all beneath his roof;
And might have won the heart of pretty maid -
But Aba-Nazar cared for naught but Gold
And so his Sweetheart, grieved for Love grown Cold,
Returned his Ring and bid him sad Fare-Well:
O, weep for Love and Marriage cheaply Sold!
Now jolly Christmas Giant, Torch a-Blaze,
Brought Merry Christmas of the Present Days
And showed Me many Sights of Rich and Poor
That fain could well the coldest Heart amaze.
For some - I tell you true: this is no Fable:
Could well Afford to set their Christmas-Table,
While others, lean of Face and Purse alike,
In spite of Same, did all that they were able.
As Cratchit set a Goose upon his Board
His Family dined as best they could afford
And toasted Aba-Nazar - not in Love,
But Duty-blessed My name before the LORD!
While Frederick, My Sister’s only Son,
With guests made Sport and merry Games and Fun
And laughed at Aba-Nazar’s Humbug-Snarl
And bore me Grudges not a Single One.
For whom hurt Scrooge’s sulks? Why, none but Me!
My Gloom abated not the Yuletide Glee.
I scowled - but all around was Merriment
And joysome Gifts beneath the Christmas-Tree.
And some who in the Coal-Mine laboured long,
And some, cast into Prison for their Wrong,
With little cause to Merry-Make, withal
Their voices raised in joyful Christmas-Song.
Then gone was jovial Christmas Present’s ghost
But showed the Shades of those who needed most
Relief at Christmas: Want and Ignorance -
O Man, how little Cause thou hast to Boast!
And last, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
Showed Aba-Nazar what he would Become:
A chilly Corpse, his passing marked by none,
His least Possessions sold for trifling Sum!
While worse, poor Cratchit’s tiny crippled Son
His earthly time untimely Told and Done:
O type of Poverty, whose Child
In Need of Help is cruelly granted None.
Now Aba-Nazar fell on Bended Knee
The Spirit to implore, in misery,
That Hope was not yet Fled, and Change of Way
Might turn aside the Day that Was To Be.
The Spirits I would Heed with ready Ear
And keep My Christmas, twelve whole Months each Year,
Take no more joy in closely-guarded Coin
But bring my Fellow-Man true Christmas Cheer.
Awake! ring Bells on snowy Christmas morn
And Aba-Nazar, like one newly Born,
Springs straightway from his Bed, and full of glee
Makes kindly Play to mark the brighter Dawn.
No more for Cratchit Christmas table Bare
Or graced alone with mean and meagre Fare:
A champion Turkey Aba-Nazar sends
For all his Friends and Family to share.
In Worship-House my Voice begin to raise
With fulsome heartfelt Christmas song of praise
Then heed at last my Nephew’s call to dine
And so at last begin my Better Days
With Cratchit to be paid a Living Wage
And nurtured Tiny Tim to come of age
Repentance true in Aba-Nazar’s heart
And on my Gloomy Past to turn the page:
Wherefore the tale of Aba-Nazar done
And with the words of Cratchit’s tiny Son
Let us retire each our own Feast to make
This Christmas: “and God Bless Us, Every One”.
Astounding. A true gift of genius!
Malacandra, what are you? An English professor?
No, an ex-computer-programmer, now a high-school teaching assistant with aspirations to teach mathematics. Thanks anyway, both.
Malacandra is a math teacher like Neal Stephenson is a physicist. (I mean that as a compliment incidentally.)
Taken as one. Yours was funnier, though.
Kind of off topic, but I like in the 80s when George Burns had a Christmas special where they followed up on Scrooge after he bacame generous and it showed how now all the towns people were taking advantage of Scrooge’s new found giving. Pretty funny
Full marks, Malacandra! Again!
Sampiro, I swear, you can take a TV show I’ve never watched and make me want to see the entire series.
Have you considered doing the West Wing? How about Project Runway?
Ahh, my annual Xmas treat. Well done, as always.
(Bumping for this Christmas. Not exactly a parody of any one author, but Kipling’s Sestina of the Tramp-Royal was the first instance of this type of poem I’d ever seen so you can thank him in part for the following - not that Kipling wrote many sestinas nor that they were in any way peculiar to him. Here goes: )
Like most of us, I don’t believe in ghosts -
Nor seen none, not in more than sixty year -
Like some of us, I weren’t a kindly host,
And never cared for all that Christmas cheer;
I kept myself at all times to myself
And grunted “Humbug!” when the Yule came round.
And 'twas the oddest thing that brought me round:
I never thought that I’d be seeing ghosts
Still less that I’d get four all to myself
On quite the coldest night in all the year
A little pot of gruel my only cheer
And Marley first of all th’ethereal host.
Well, Marley told me I’d be playing host
And soon this candle-flaming spook came round
With, on my part at least, no flaming cheer:
But - who can tell the powers of the ghosts? -
I saw an old and half-forgotten year
And there I watched and listened to myself.
Seemed all my woes were mostly from myself -
My prentice-master were a genial host -
And next the spirit of the present year
Showed rich and poor about their Christmas round;
And nephews rich or Cratchits thin as ghosts
All turned their hands to making Christmas cheer.
But Future’s spirit wasn’t full of cheer
And made me think most urgent for myself;
For soon or late, it’s sure we’ll all be ghosts
And join the heavenly or the hellbound host.
Well, plain it was unless I turned around
I’d die, unblessed, unmourned, within the year.
I begged a sign this wasn’t my last year -
I swore I’d practise proper Christmas cheer
Not just one day a year, but all year round
And give up hoarding gold to spite myself
But spend it, as becomes a generous host -
And that was last I saw of all the ghosts.
So drink some Christmas cheer with me, your host,
I’ll fill the glass myself and hand it round
And bless the kindly ghosts for this good year!