The Curmudgeon’s Own Christmas Book
Author: Robert Benchley; Irvin S. Cobb; Stephen Leacock; Damon Runyon; Anne Field; George A. Baker Jr.
Date: 1906-12-31T22:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Wit and Humor; Satire; Christmas; Short Fiction; Essays; Poetry
Description: An assortment of humorous writings for the cynical and hard-of-heart. Satires, spoofs, and just-plain-silliness will elicit grins, chuckles, and more than a few nods of recognition. And, just maybe, a little holiday spirit might slip in and take you by surprise.
Publisher: MobileRead
Rights: Text is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+70” or less.

The Curmudgeon’s
Own Christmas Book

A COLLECTION
OF POEMS, STORIES, AND ESSAYS
TO SATISFY YOUR INNER GRINCH

CONTENTS:

The Newest Thing in Christmas Carols    (verse)
Anonymous

On Santa Claus
George A. Baker, Jr.

Holidays (excerpt)
Irvin S. Cobb

Christmas Presents
Irvin S. Cobb

A Christmas Letter
Stephen Leacock

Hoodoo McFiggin’s Christmas
Stephen Leacock

The Errors of Santa Claus
Stephen Leacock

The Christmas Ghost
Stephen Leacock

Christmas Shopping
Stephen Leacock

Editha’s Christmas Burglar
Robert Benchley

Holiday! Holiday!
Robert Benchley

Here Come the Children
Robert Benchley

A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas
Robert Benchley

A Christmas Spectacle
Robert Benchley

A Christmas Pantomime
Robert Benchley

Home for the Holidays
Robert Benchley

Christmas Afternoon
Robert Benchley

A Christmas Insurrection
(verse)   Anne Field

Holiday Hospitality
Damon Runyon

Alias Santa Claus
Damon Runyon

Grandpap and the Yuletide
Damon Runyon

Dancing Dan’s Christmas
Damon Runyon

The Night After Christmas
(verse)   Anne Field

… About This eBook

The Newest Thing
in Christmas Carols

God rest you, merry gentlemen!

May nothing you dismay;

Not even the dyspeptic plates

Through which you’ll eat your way;

Nor yet the heavy Christmas bills

The season bids you pay;

No, nor the ever tiresome need

Of being to order gay;

Nor yet the shocking cold you’ll catch

If fog and slush hold sway;

Nor yet the tumbles you must bear

If frost should win the day;

Nor sleepless nights—they’re sure to come—

When “waits” attune their lay;

Nor pantomimes, whose dreariness

Might turn your hair to gray;

Nor boisterous children, home in heaps,

And ravenous of play;

Nor yet—in fact, the host of ills

Which Christmases array.

God rest you, merry gentlemen,

May none of these dismay!

—Anonymous
from Christmas (1907)
ed. Robert Haven Schauffler

On Santa Claus

Brave old times those were. In the first half of the seventeenth century, we mean; before there was any such place as New York and Manhattan Island was occupied mostly by woods, and had a funny little Dutch town, known as New Amsterdam, sprouting out of the southern end of it. Those were the days of solid comfort, of mighty pipes, and unctuous doughnuts. Winter had not yet been so much affected by artificiality as he is nowadays, and was contented to be what he is, not trying to pass himself off for Spring; and Christmas—well, it was Christmas. Do you know why? Because in those times Santa Claus used to live in a great old house in the midst of an evergreen forest, just back of the Hudson, and about halfway between New Amsterdam and Albany. A house built out of funny little Dutch bricks, with gables whose sides looked like staircases, and a roof of red tiles with more weathercocks and chimneys sticking out of it than you could count. Phew, how cold it was there! The wind roared and shouted around the house, and the snow fell steadily half the year, so that the summers never melted it away till winter came again. And Santa Claus thought that was the greatest pleasure in life: for he loved to have enormous fires in the great fireplaces, and the colder it was, the bigger fires he would have, and the louder the winds roared around his chimney. There he sat and worked away all the year round, making dolls, and soldiers, and Noah’s arks, and witches, and every other sort of toy you can think of. When Christmas Eve came he’d harness up his reindeer, Dasher, and Prancer, and Vixen, and the rest of them, and wrap himself up in furs, and light his big pipe, and cram his sled full of the doll-babies and Noah’s arks, and all the other toys he’d been making, and off he’d go with a great shout and tremendous ringing of sleigh-bells. Before morning he’d be up and down every chimney in New Amsterdam, filling the stout gray yarn stockings with toys, and apples, and gingerbread, laughing and chuckling so all the while, that the laughs and chuckles didn’t get out of the air for a week afterwards.

But the old house has gone to ruin, and Santa Claus doesn’t live there any longer. You see, he married about forty years ago; his wife was a Grundy, daughter of old Mrs. Grundy, of Fifth Avenue, of whom you’ve all heard. She married him for his money, and couldn’t put up with his plain way of living and his careless jollity. He is such an easy-going, good-natured old soul, that she manages him without any trouble. So the first thing she did was to make him change his name to St. Nicholas; then she made him give up his old house, and move into town; then she sent away the reindeer, for she didn’t know what Ma would say to such an outlandish turnout; then she threw away his pipe because it was vulgar, and the first Christmas Eve that he went off and stayed out all night she had hysterics, an declared she’d go home to her Ma, and get a divorce if he ever did such a thing again. She’d have put a stop to his giving away toys every year, too, only she thought it looked well, and as it was, she wouldn’t let him make them himself any more, but compelled him to spend enormous sums in bringing them from Paris, and Vienna, and Nuremberg.

So now Santa Claus is St. Nicholas, and lives in a brownstone house on Fifth Avenue, a great deal handsomer than he can afford, and keeps a carriage, not because he wants it, but because Mrs. Shoddy, next door, keeps one; and loves not to be jolly himself and to make everybody else so, but to please his wife’s mother. He has to give an awful pull, what with his wife’s extravagance, and the high prices of Parisian and Viennese toys, to make both ends meet, although he does speculate in stocks, and is very lucky. Instead of looking forward to Christmas with pleasure, and thinking what a good time he will have, he pulls out his ledger, and groans, and wonders how on earth he’s going to make his presents this year, and thinks he would stop giving them entirely, only he’s so mortally afraid of his mother-in-law, and he knows what she’d say if he did. So he borrows money wherever he can, and sends over to Paris for fans, and opera-glasses, and bonbon boxes, and jewelry, and when they come he sits down in his parlor and lets his wife tell him just what to do with them. So she takes out her list and runs over the names; she has all the rich people down, for she is a religious woman, and the Bible says “unto him that hath, it shall be given.” This is the way she talks: “The little Croeuses must have some very elegant things, of course; their mother’s a horrid old cat, but Croesus could help you very much in business. And there are the Centlivres; we must pick out something magnificent for them; they give a party Christmas night: of course the presents will be on exhibition, and I shall sink with shame if any one else’s are handsomer than ours.” So she goes on, until all the rich people are disposed of. Then Santa Claus asks: “How about the Brinkers, my dear?” The Brinkers are great favorites of his. “Good gracious, dearest! How often have I told you, you mustn’t manifest such an interest in those Brinkers? What would Ma say if she knew you associated with such common people!” “But, I’m Dutch myself, pet.” “Of course you are, darling, but there’s no need of letting every one know it!” St. Nicholas hardly dares to do it, but he finally suggests very meekly: “The poor children, my darling.” “Bother the poor children, my dear!” They’re a most affectionate couple, you know. Then St. Nicholas sighs and sighs, and sends for his messengers, and they all come in with long faces, and take off big packages to the Croesuses and the Centlivres, and the rest of them. The messengers do their work entirely as a matter of business, so there isn’t a sign of a laugh, nor a symptom of a chuckle in the air next day. The little Croesuses first cry, because they haven’t received more, and then fight over what they have; then they eat too much French candy, and get sick and cross, and the whole house is filled with their noise. So mamma has a headache; and papa longs for his office, and misses the tick-tick of the stock telegraph, and thinks what a confounded nuisance holidays are. That is what Christmas is like in good society.

But I must tell you a secret. Away up in the fourth-story of his grand house, where his wife never goes, St. Nicholas has a little workshop, and there he sits whenever he gets a chance, making the most wonderful dolls, and gorgeous soldiers, and miraculous jumping-jacks, and tin horns—such quantities of tin horns! Some one ought to speak to him about those tin horns. But after all they please the poor children, so we suppose it’s all right. Now do you know what he does with these things? On Christmas Eve he gets his old sled down from the stable away up by the North Pole, and as soon as his wife is fast asleep, he puts on his old furs and gets out from under his shirts in his bureau drawer a Dutch pipe, three times as big as the one his wife threw away, and off he goes. He tumbles down all the poor people’s chimneys, and fills up the stockings to overflowing, and plants gorgeous Christmas trees in all the Mission schools.

He has a glorious good time, and laughs and chuckles tremendously, except when, once in a while, he thinks of what would happen if his wife found him out.

So there’s a little fun going on after all.

Do you know, if it were not for this performance of his, we should wish with all our heart that St. Nicholas were dead and buried. But we must say, we wish his wife would die, and that all the Grundy family would follow her good example, for between them they’ve spoiled a good many jolly people besides St. Nicholas.

—George A. Baker, Jr.

from Christmas (1907)
ed. Robert Haven Schauffler

Holidays

(EXCERPT)

Complaint is constantly being made that, as a nation, we do not celebrate our holidays in a rational manner. This is undoubtedly true. If we celebrated them rationally they would not be holidays. Things of a rational nature are rarely of a festive nature. Take commonsense shoes, now, or health foods, or sanitary underwear; take those reforms in woman’s dress that spring up from time to time and make some women look like men and some men look like thunder—all these things are rational in the extreme, but they do not partake of a holidaying aspect.

In regard to our holidays, also, some persons insist that we already have too many; they, as a rule, are the ones who pay out salaries. Others think we have not nearly enough, and they are frequently those who draw salaries. But to one standing at the end of the year, looking back on the holidays of the past twelve months or else looking forward to the holidays of the ensuing twelve, it seems as though we have just exactly enough holidays to suit every taste. To be sure, we haven’t so many as Robinson Crusoe had on his desert island. Except on Friday’s Thursdays out, I judge every day was Sunday to Crusoe. Nor do we have so many as our friends the Mexicans, to the south of us. According to what I hear, there’s hardly a day in the year that isn’t a saint’s day down there; and here lately all the vacant dates practically have been filled in with the other national pastime of revoluting, thus providing constant entertainment for the humble peon and his wife, the dusky peonola, and all his little peanutcitas. In parts of Mexico, so they tell me, almost the only thing a native won’t put off until tomorrow is a holiday. One gathers that among those people holy men have occurred almost as numerously as a certain other class among us—one being born every minute and sometimes twins, as the late P. T. Barnum once remarked.

•     •     •     •     •

[…]

And that brings us up to the final festival of the year—it brings us up to Christmas. I am ardently and enthusiastically for Christmas, but I am not bigoted on the subject. I am glad, as the poem says, that Christmas comes but once a year. Once is enough! Many of us would regard with disfavor any movement looking to a midsummer revival of Christmas. In this regard I am in accord with a friend of mine who says he can always tell when next Christmas is coming by the fact that he is almost through paying last Christmas’ bills. He is heartily fond of Santa Claus, he says, but he dislikes the male chorus of bill collectors who travel just behind him.

This, of course, is the grown-up attitude—and, after all, the grown-up attitude has no place in the real Christmas spirit, I guess. The true Christmas spirit belongs only to the child who still believes in Santa Claus. I can remember with some vividness the person who first undeceived me in this matter. I couldn’t have been over six years old at the time, but I remember him as though it were yesterday— He was one of those persons who are able to combine religion and business in such a way as not to interfere with the business. I think he had taken an oath never to be happy until Neal Dow was elected president. I was greatly reminded of him not long ago when in a magazine I came across a group picture of twenty trust magnates who had been indicted for violating the pure-food law. No two of them looked alike, but they all looked like him somehow. He deemed it a sin that parents should deceive their children regarding the identity of Santa Claus, and he also deemed it his sacred duty to spread the truth wherever possible. So he took advantage of the first opportunity that came along to give me the correct facts. This party has been dead a good while now, and I expect at some future date to hear that he is spending his eternity climbing up and down red-hot chimneys, with nothing on except a celluloid collar, and—with his bare hands—stuffing live coals into the asbestos stockings of little sleeping devils.

Of course I don’t expect to see this person doing it myself—I only expect to hear of his doing it.

Sometimes I think nobody over the age of fourteen should be allowed to celebrate Christmas—it seems so utterly illogical when Christmas approaches that I should be bankrupting myself buying unsuitable gifts for people I don’t care for merely because they are going to do the same for me. And Christmas to a grown person is so disappointing—you may have noticed that! You long for a set of rare old editions and you get a purple plush bookmark. You figure on a fur overcoat and your second cousin out in Kansas sends you a card showing a view of a snowstorm in a churchyard cemetery at night, with Compliments of the Season printed on it. Cousins seem to run very much to seconds, anyhow, these times. For months past, your mind has been set on a mahogany humidor. Do you get it? You do not. some elderly female of your acquaintance knits you a pair of woolen monstrosities that would do for bedroom slippers if they were a little bit larger, or for earmuffs if they were a little smaller. Yet, Christmas morning, when there is murder seething and boiling in your heart, you are expected to go forth with a smile on your face and wish everybody you meet a Merry Christmas! Or maybe you are induced to celebrate Christmas after the quaint old fashion that has come down to us from the Danes or the Siwashes or somebody, which consists of drinking eggnog until both your Plimsolls are awash and the earth becomes void and without form and darkness covers the earth. Or else you eat too much!

But this applies to grown people; with the children it is different. To them Santa Claus isn’t a fanciful conception of Mr. Andrew Carnegie in automobile togs. He’s a real saint and he behaves as such. And I guess maybe the worldwide chorus of childish joy that goes up and up on Christmas morning, until it sets the joy bells at Heaven’s gate ringing in harmony with it, is compensation enough for what the adult population suffers. It squares the whole account. What was it Tiny Tim said?

Before closing this article I wish to speak of the wager the questions-and-answers department of every newspaper is called upon to answer every few days—the one where A bets B there are no legal holidays in this country.

I am glad to be able to state that there are not. What, I ask you, has the legal profession ever done to entitle it to a holiday of its own? When the writing profession is properly recognized with a holiday it will be time then to do something for the legal profession—and not before.

—Irvin S. Cobb
from The Saturday Evening Post,
21 Dec 1912

Christmas Presents

As we go along, probably it will be noted by the careful reader that I am writing this in the first person mostly, and a good part of the time in the present tense. It is for convenience that I do this. Though it is of myself that I speak, I speak also for the world of men at large, or ostensibly so—that is to say, some of them are at large and the others are married.

Particularly would I address myself to the married ones. For you, my brethren, you know, you understand, you have that fellow feeling. I do not have to tell you that to a happily married man the proper exercise of the true Christian spirit consists largely in giving your wife for Christmas the things she wants most and having her give you the things she wants next to most. With scarcely a break the arrangement has come down to us married men from the Garden of Eden. Maybe Christmas wasn’t organized then, but woman was; and once a woman always a woman. I am indulging in no cheap punnery when I refer to the mother of our race as the First Christmas Eve; the three words just seem to fit in, that’s all.

I picture the scene: it is nightfall of December the twenty-fourth in the year One, B. C. The lion and the lamb lie down to rest together. The time is about to come when should these two lie down together only the lion will get up in the morning, the lamb remaining down until thoroughly digested. But now the first vegetarianism epidemic is in vogue and there are no meat-eaters. Our original grandparents also seek repose upon the grassy lea. It is by deliberate intent that the lady in the case has lured her guileless helpmate to a spot where the heaviest-laden apple tree in the orchard—and the only one in the entire collection bearing a sign reading “All Persons are Prohibited From Picking Fruit Off This Tree”—spreads its sheltering boughs. There is a purpose in the woman’s seeming fancy. She knows exactly what she is about. But Adam, the poor slob, suspects nothing. This is the first woman he has ever met. He is, as the saying goes, easy. He prepares to stretch himself beneath the leafy canopy. He aims to drift right off to sleep. He has put in a hard day, loafing round and killing time. Work hasn’t been created into the world yet, and the poor, bored wretch is all fagged out from doing nothing. Eve speaks.

“Adam,” she says, “tomorrow will be Christmas in the Garden. Let us hang up our fig leaves—Santa Claus might bring us something.”

“Where do you get that Santa Claus stuff?” responds Adam, not unkindly, mind you, but in a spirit of gentle raillery. “I’m a grown man,” says Adam.

“Are you, really?” she asks. There is a hidden meaning in her bantering reply, but it goes over his head.“Anyhow, dearie, let’s hang up our fig leaves—there can’t be any harm in it. Just to humor me, now—please!”

“Oh, very well,” he says, just as every subsequent husband has said under similar conditions a thousand times. “Oh, very well, have your own way. But I’m willing to risk a couple of the best city lots in this restricted residential district I can put my hand on the party who’s been handing you that Santa Claus yarn, and not have to travel more than a quarter of a mile to do it either. I saw him talking with you yesterday while I was trying to teach the two Potomac shad how to swim. Eve, thank goodness I’m not jealous, and far be it from me to interfere with your friendships round the neighborhood—I guess things do get pretty lonely for you, hanging about the place all day—but if I were you I wouldn’t waste much time in the company of that Snake. He’s the worst he-gossip in Eden County. I don’t like his eye either. He’d make trouble for anybody in a holy minute if he got the chance, or I miss my guess.” Husband-like, though, he follows her example and hangs up his figleaf alongside of hers, upon the face of a nearby rock where a cleft in the cliff suggests a fireplace. Two minutes later he is snoring to beat the walrus, asleep in the next glade. But does the lady drop right off too? She does not. She lies down all right, after looking under the edge of the mossy bank for burglars, but she doesn’t stay there.

As soon as everything is nice and quiet, up she gets. Stealthily she plucks an apple from that forbidden tree and stealthily she slips it down inside of Adam’s fig leaf. After that she can hardly wait through the night for daylight to appear. When the first pink rays of the sunlight come stealing athwart the sward she is sitting up and poking Adam in the ribs.

“Oh, dearie,” she cries in well-simulated surprise,“see what Santa has brought us—a lovely red apple.”

And Adam falls for the deception. It is the original fall of man. Personally he doesn’t care much for apples. Offhand he can think of a dozen things he likes better for breakfast. But, man-like, he humors her. He takes one bite, and then she snatches the apple away from him and eats all of it—slowly and distinctly.

You see it now, don’t you—the true inwardness of the Christmas gift-giving habit as between married couples? She has gone through the form of giving him for Christmas the very thing that she has been wanting for herself all along. Her daughters have been playing the same game ever since. They are still playing it. They are playing it this Christmas.

In my own experience I have known but one married man who rebelled against this precedent which dates back so far and has been found to work out so well and so satisfactorily. He knew—he found it out some way—that as a Christmas gift his wife was going to give him the Chippendale sewing table which she had been wishful for during so many months. And he for some perverse reason preferred that it should be a humidor full of imported cigars. In the then state of his finances he could ill afford to pay for the Chippendale sewing table or the humidor and its contents; but since, in either event, the bill for his wife’s present to him would reach his desk on or about January the accursed first, just as always it had in previous years, he thought on the whole the cigars would mean more in his young life than the sewing table would. To him Chippendale was only a highly expensive name anyhow. It seemed to him that every time he heard the word mentioned it had cost him money. Personally he hoped Chippendale had choked to death on one of his own chair legs. And he did revel in a good cigar.

So he began to hint round and in a low, crafty, insinuating way to drop suggestions here and there. But the seed, so far as he could tell, fell on barren ground. So then, being desperate, he came right out into the open. He said if anybody gave him anything for Christmas he hoped it would be cigars—in a humidor. He described the humidor minutely; it was one he had seen downtown and he had priced it, and he knew the price and knew exactly how it looked, and said so. And he mentioned the brand of cigars with which he wished to have the humidor stocked—good, high-priced cigars they were. He was tired, he said, of smoking a cigar which blew up on him when it was burned halfway down and made him look as though he had been cleaning the ashes out of an anthracite stove, and left a taste in his mouth like a tintype gallery. He looked hard at the lady as he named the brand, and then he spelled it out.

In other words he made an issue of it, and that naturally made of it what is called a scene. She cried, saying repeatedly, between sobs, she knew now what he was driving at, and it was perfectly evident he didn’t care for her as he once had, else he would never question her taste and her judgment in selecting for him a suitable Christmas remembrance, but would accept it in the same spirit of thoughtfulness and affection in which it was tendered. Under the circumstances what could he do? He hauled down his flag and surrendered. But it came mightily near to spoiling his wife’s whole Christmas for her. If my memory serves me aright he not only had to greet the Chippendale sewing table with a broad smile of seeming surprise and joy on Christmas morning and go round all day babbling deliriously that it was just exactly what he had been wanting and how did she ever come to think of it, and how perfectly splendid it would look standing in his wife’s bedroom, but he had to go further still. To square him completely and restore him to his former place in her estimation required an evening cape trimmed with genuine chinchilla, and a jeweled hair ornament, and a Chow dog that was beginning to ravel badly, thus making it more costly, and one of those oblong rings such as women wore a few years back—you know the kind—it was set with different-colored stones and looked a good deal like a memorial window—whereas originally he had contemplated investing only in the evening cape. It taught him a lesson, though.

Thus far I have dealt with married man. When a man, in addition to being married, is the head of a family, the force of the observation goes double. To get the full value of my meaning you have but to consider in its entirety the list of suitable gifts for the various members of any given household which is printed each December in the holiday number of every properly conducted home-and-fireside periodical along with an informative article entitled Christmas in Other Lands and an editorial containing a quotation attributed to the late Tiny Tim. You remember—don’t you?—how runs the long and serried column of suitable gifts: For Daughter: A selection of thirty-five separate items, leading off with a set of ermine or an electric runabout and tapering gradually down to a dressing-table outfit in solid silver; for Son: A racing car, or an English fowling piece, or a few polo ponies, or any one of twenty other timely little remembrances; for Mother: This and that; for Baby: Thus and so. Finally, away down at the foot of the line we come to him who is expected to pay for all these things. And what is he to have for his Christmas? What does the inspired author of the compilation regard as befitting his deserts at this merry Yuletide season? I quote: For Father; A necktie, a book, a set of dominoes, a razor strop.

•     •     •     •     •

Just the other day I had a conversation with a man who is well-to-do and generous and a good provider. He was telling me that year before last his Christmas gifts to others totaled up to close on three thousand dollars, and what he received in return was a burned-wood wastepaper basket. What he chiefly regretted was that because of its shape and size and general aspect he mistook it for something new in the line of cuspidors and used it as such, and by the time he discovered his error it was no longer fitted to be a wastepaper basket and had proved its utter unfitness as a cuspidor.

Please observe, however, that I do not speak these words in a carping spirit. Out of all the animal kingdom the carp, next to the malaria microbe, is the creature that appeals to me least. Especially here of late have I developed an aversion for the imported European carp, which wears a hyphen where its rear fin should be and does most of its carping in the direction of the President of the United States. So I would not have you think I am carping against Christmas, the same being an institution which I have ever revered most highly, although I will confess that now, perhaps, one does not enthuse over it with the same abandon which one displayed when one was, let us say, twelve years old, going on thirteen. Besides, in this matter of his Christmas bestowals I take it that man is but fulfilling the destinies of his sex. As one looks rearward through the years that stretch behind one in an ever-growing procession it would seem that the public mind with regard to the masculine share in Christmas has ever been so. Why then should it not continue to be so?

Think back upon your own youth, Mister Male Reader. Wasn’t it so in your own experience that the girls in the family got for Christmas what they yearned for, and that the boys got the benefit of what small change was left over, if any? And women are but girls grown up, and the boy, as someone else has remarked, is father to the man. Sometimes he must feel justifiably ashamed of his own offspring too. But that is neither here nor there. The point I seek to make is that when a man at Christmastime gives and gives and gives until he is broke as flat as fillet of sole, and receives in return an artwork design in hammered brass that is too large for a breast-pin and too homely for a wall ornament, he is but complying with the hallowed precedents of the centuries, but living up to the imperishable traditions of the season. On the other hand, when the girls, which of course includes the grown-up girls—God bless ’em and keep ’em and curb ’em!—are vouchsafed at Christmas time all that their hearts may desire, they likewise are in accord with the common laws of species, custom and civilization. From this classification I would except only the confirmed yet hopeful bachelor maid, formerly known as the old maid. To me a most melancholy spectacle is the middle-aged bachelor maid who hangs up her stocking on Christmas Eve, knowing deep down in her soul that a stocking will never hold what she really wants for Christmas, but that a pair of socks would.

Even as I pen these lines I, as the head of a family with a large and constantly widening circle of relatives and acquaintances, am deeply engrossed in my own Christmas-gift schedules. I shall invest to the limit of my resources. I expect but little back. I only trust that I shall not get for my Christmas a rejected manuscript. If I should, though, and if perchance that rejected manuscript should be this manuscript, the loss, dear reader, will be not only mine but thine. For you will not be reading these remarks and I shall not be enjoying the use of the money customarily paid by editors for such remarks when properly typewritten on one side of the paper and accompanied by a self-addressed envelope with stamps to cover return postage affixed. And then, won’t it be a gloomy Christmas for both of us!

•     •     •     •     •

Sometimes I think a man—a married man with extensive domestic obligations—is not to be blamed for thinking of Santa Claus as an elderly porch climber with many aliases and a bad record, a corrupt old offender speaking with a Low-Dutch accent and wearing an Andrew Carnegie make-up of white whiskers, who comes forth on Christmas Eve with his sleigh empty and goes back home again on Christmas morning laden with loot wrested from weak-minded male adults. Sometimes I think I am not to be blamed for wishing for the enactment of a Federal law requiring that all the children in the land shall have a full share in Christmas joys, and that all persons over sixteen years of age shall take their Christmas out in the interchange of good wishes and inexpensive Christmas cards. It must have been a man of family who first wrote Christmas as Xmas, with the X prominently displayed as in ten-dollar bills.

After all, though, why complain even indirectly? Christmas helps business—it helps everybody’s business seemingly, except one’s own business. And if to the kids the Star of Bethlehem is not a threat but a promise, and if on Christmas morning the kids are happier for its coming, and the poor, whom we have with us always, are having some reason to be grateful to somebody, isn’t that reward enough?

The answer, my countrymen, is “Yes.”

—Irvin S. Cobb
from The Saturday Evening Post,
11 Dec 1915

A Christmas Letter

(In answer to a young lady
who has sent an invitation
to be present at a children’s party)

Mademoiselle,

Allow me very gratefully but firmly to refuse your kind invitation. You doubtless mean well; but your ideas are unhappily mistaken.

Let us understand one another once and for all. I cannot at my mature age participate in the sports of children with such abandon as I could wish. I entertain, and have always entertained, the sincerest regard for such games as Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man’s Buff. But I have now reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded and to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with a hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokes me to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate in reckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders with a drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and knees under the pretense that I am a bear without a sense of personal insufficiency, which is painful to me.

Neither can I look on with a complacent eye at the sad spectacle of your young clerical friend, the Reverend Mr. Uttermost Farthing, abandoning himself to such gambols and appearing in the role of life and soul of the evening. Such a degradation of his holy calling grieves me, and I cannot but suspect him of ulterior motives.

You inform me that your maiden aunt intends to help you to entertain the party. I have not, as you know, the honor of your aunt’s acquaintance, yet I think I may with reason surmise that she will organize games—guessing games—in which she will ask me to name a river in Asia beginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will put a hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the children will clap their hands. These games, my dear young friend, involve the use of a more adaptable intellect than mine, and I cannot consent to be a party to them.

May I say in conclusion that I do not consider a five-cent pen-wiper from the top branch of a Xmas tree any adequate compensation for the kind of evening you propose.

I have the honor

To subscribe myself,

Your obedient servant.

—Stephen Leacock
from Literary Lapses (1910)

Hoodoo McFiggin’s Christmas

This Santa Claus business is played out. It’s a sneaking, underhand method, and the sooner it’s exposed the better.

For a parent to get up under cover of the darkness of night and palm off a ten-cent necktie on a boy who had been expecting a ten-dollar watch, and then say that an angel sent it to him, is low, undeniably low.

I had a good opportunity of observing how the thing worked this Christmas, in the case of young Hoodoo McFiggin, the son and heir of the McFiggins, at whose house I board.

Hoodoo McFiggin is a good boy—a religious boy. He had been given to understand that Santa Claus would bring nothing to his father and mother because grown-up people don’t get presents from the angels. So he saved up all his pocket-money and bought a box of cigars for his father and a seventy-five-cent diamond brooch for his mother. His own fortunes he left in the hands of the angels. But he prayed. He prayed every night for weeks that Santa Claus would bring him a pair of skates and a puppy-dog and an air-gun and a bicycle and a Noah’s ark and a sleigh and a drum—altogether about a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of stuff.

I went into Hoodoo’s room quite early Christmas morning. I had an idea that the scene would be interesting. I woke him up and he sat up in bed, his eyes glistening with radiant expectation, and began hauling things out of his stocking.

The first parcel was bulky; it was done up quite loosely and had an odd look generally.

“Ha! ha!” Hoodoo cried gleefully, as he began undoing it. “I’ll bet it’s the puppy-dog, all wrapped up in paper!”

And was it the puppy-dog? No, by no means. It was a pair of nice, strong, number-four boots, laces and all, labeled, “Hoodoo, from Santa Claus,” and underneath Santa Claus had written, “95 net.”

The boy’s jaw fell with delight. “It’s boots,” he said, and plunged in his hand again.

He began hauling away at another parcel with renewed hope on his face.

This time the thing seemed like a little round box. Hoodoo tore the paper off it with a feverish hand. He shook it; something rattled inside.

“It’s a watch and chain! It’s a watch and chain!” he shouted. Then he pulled the lid off.

And was it a watch and chain? No. It was a box of nice, brand-new celluloid collars, a dozen of them all alike and all his own size.

The boy was so pleased that you could see his face crack up with pleasure.

He waited a few minutes until his intense joy subsided. Then he tried again.

This time the packet was long and hard. It resisted the touch and had a sort of funnel shape.

“It’s a toy pistol!” said the boy, trembling with excitement. “Gee! I hope there are lots of caps with it! I’ll fire some off now and wake up father.”

No, my poor child, you will not wake your father with that. It is a useful thing, but it needs not caps and it fires no bullets, and you cannot wake a sleeping man with a tooth-brush. Yes, it was a tooth-brush—a regular beauty, pure bone all through, and ticketed with a little paper, “Hoodoo, from Santa Claus.”

Again the expression of intense joy passed over the boy’s face, and the tears of gratitude started from his eyes. He wiped them away with his tooth-brush and passed on.

The next packet was much larger and evidently contained something soft and bulky. It had been too long to go into the stocking and was tied outside.

“I wonder what this is,” Hoodoo mused, half afraid to open it. Then his heart gave a great leap, and he forgot all his other presents in the anticipation of this one. “It’s the drum!” he gasped. “It’s the drum, all wrapped up!”

Drum nothing! It was pants—a pair of the nicest little short pants—yellowish-brown short pants—with dear little stripes of color running across both ways, and here again Santa Claus had written, “Hoodoo, from Santa Claus, one fort net.”

But there was something wrapped up in it. Oh, yes! There was a pair of braces wrapped up in it, braces with a little steel sliding thing so that you could slide your pants up to your neck, if you wanted to.

The boy gave a dry sob of satisfaction. Then he took out his last present. “It’s a book,” he said, as he unwrapped it. “I wonder if it is fairy stories or adventures. Oh, I hope it’s adventures! I’ll read it all morning.”

No, Hoodoo, it was not precisely adventures. It was a small family Bible. Hoodoo had now seen all his presents, and he arose and dressed. But he still had the fun of playing with his toys. That is always the chief delight of Christmas morning.

First he played with his tooth-brush. He got a whole lot of water and brushed all his teeth with it. This was huge.

Then he played with his collars. He had no end of fun with them, taking them all out one by one and swearing at them, and then putting them back and swearing at the whole lot together.

The next toy was his pants. He had immense fun there, putting them on and taking them off again, and then trying to guess which side was which by merely looking at them.

After that he took his book and read some adventures called “Genesis” till breakfast-time.

Then he went downstairs and kissed his father and mother. His father was smoking a cigar, and his mother had her new brooch on. Hoodoo’s face was thoughtful, and a light seemed to have broken in upon his mind. Indeed, I think it altogether likely that next Christmas he will hang on to his own money and take chances on what the angels bring.

—Stephen Leacock
from Literary Lapses (1910)

The Errors of Santa Claus

It was Christmas Eve.

The Browns, who lived in the adjoining house, had been dining with the Joneses.

Brown and Jones were sitting over wine and walnuts at the table. The others had gone upstairs.

“What are you giving to your boy for Christmas?” asked Brown.

“A train,” said Jones, “new kind of thing—automatic.”

“Let’s have a look at it,” said Brown.

Jones fetched a parcel from the sideboard and began unwrapping it.

“Ingenious thing, isn’t it?” he said. “Goes on its own rails. Queer how kids love to play with trains, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” assented Brown. “How are the rails fixed?”

“Wait, I’ll show you,” said Jones. “Just help me to shove these dinner things aside and roll back the cloth. There! See! You lay the rails like that and fasten them at the ends, so—”

“Oh, yes, I catch on, makes a grade, doesn’t it? Just the thing to amuse a child, isn’t it? I got Willy a toy airplane.”

“I know, they’re great. I got Edwin one on his birthday. But I thought I’d get him a train this time. I told him Santa Claus was going to bring him something altogether new this time. Edwin, of course, believes in Santa Claus absolutely. Say, look at this locomotive, would you? It has a spring coiled up inside the fire box.”

“Wind her up,” said Brown with great interest. “Let’s see her go.”

“All right,” said Jones. “Just pile up two or three plates or something to lean the end of the rails on. There, notice the way it buzzes before it starts. Isn’t that a great thing for a kid, eh?”

“Yes,” said Brown. “And say, see this little string to pull the whistle! By Gad, it toots, eh? Just like real?”

“Now then, Brown,” Jones went on, “you hitch on those cars and I’ll start her. I’ll be engineer, eh!”

•     •     •     •     •

Half an hour later Brown and Jones were still playing trains on the dining-room table.

But their wives upstairs in the drawing-room hardly noticed their absence. They were too much interested.

“Oh, I think it’s perfectly sweet,” said Mrs. Brown. “Just the loveliest doll I’ve seen in years. I must get one like it for Ulvina. Won’t Clarisse be perfectly enchanted?”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Jones, “and then she’ll have all the fun of arranging the dresses. Children love that so much. Look, there are three little dresses with the doll, aren’t they cute? All cut out and ready to stitch together.”

“Oh, how perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown. “I think the mauve one would suit the doll best, don’t you, with such golden hair? Only don’t you think it would make it much nicer to turn back the collar, so, and to put a little band—so?”

“What a good idea!” said Mrs. Jones. “Do let’s try it. Just wait, I’ll get a needle in a minute. I’ll tell Clarisse that Santa Claus sewed it himself. The child believes in Santa Claus absolutely.”

•     •     •     •     •

And half an hour later Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown were so busy stitching dolls’ clothes that they could not hear the roaring of the little train up and down the dining table, and had no idea what the four children were doing.

Nor did the children miss their mothers.

“Dandy, aren’t they?” Edwin Jones was saying to little Willie Brown, as they sat in Edwin’s bedroom. “A hundred in a box, with cork tips, and see, an amber mouthpiece that fits into a little case at the side. Good present for Dad, eh?”

“Fine!” said Willie appreciatively. “I’m giving Father cigars.”

“I know, I thought of cigars too. Men always like cigars and cigarettes. You can’t go wrong on them. Say, would you like to try one or two of these cigarettes? We can take them from the bottom. You’ll like them, they’re Russian—away ahead of Egyptian.”

“Thanks,” answered Willie. “I’d like one immensely. I only started smoking last spring—on my twelfth birthday. I think a feller’s a fool to begin smoking cigarettes too soon, don’t you? It stunts him. I waited till I was twelve.”

“Me too,” said Edwin, as they lighted their cigarettes. “In fact, I wouldn’t buy them now if it weren’t for Dad. I simply had to give him something from Santa Claus. He believes in Santa Claus absolutely, you know.”

•     •     •     •     •

And, while this was going on, Clarisse was showing little Ulvina the absolutely lovely little bridge set that she got for her mother.

“Aren’t these markers perfectly charming?” said Ulvina. “And don’t you love this little Dutch design—or is it Flemish, darling?”

“Dutch,” said Clarisse. “Isn’t it quaint? And aren’t these the dearest little things, for putting the money in when you play. I needn’t have got them with it—they’d have sold the rest separately—but I think it’s too utterly slow playing without money, don’t you?”

“Oh, abominable,” shuddered Ulvina. “But your mamma never plays for money, does she?”

“Mamma! Oh, gracious, no. Mamma’s far too slow for that. But I shall tell her that Santa Claus insisted on putting in the little money boxes.”

“I suppose she believes in Santa Claus, just as my mamma does.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Clarisse, and added, “What if we play a little game! With a double dummy, the French way, or Norwegian Skat, if you like. That only needs two.”

“All right,” agreed Ulvina, and in a few minutes they were deep in a game of cards with a little pile of pocket money beside them.

•     •     •     •     •

About half an hour later, all the members of the two families were again in the drawing-room. But of course nobody said anything about the presents. In any case they were all too busy looking at the beautiful big Bible, with maps in it, that the Joneses had brought to give to Grandfather. They all agreed that, with the help of it, Grandfather could hunt up any place in Palestine in a moment, day or night.

But upstairs, away upstairs in a sitting-room of his own Grandfather Jones was looking with an affectionate eye at the presents that stood beside him. There was a beautiful whiskey decanter, with silver filigree outside (and whiskey inside) for Jones, and for the little boy a big nickel-plated Jew’s harp.

•     •     •     •     •

Later on, far in the night, the person, or the influence, or whatever it is called Santa Claus, took all the presents and placed them in the people’s stockings.

And, being blind as he always has been, he gave the wrong things to the wrong people—in fact, he gave them just as indicated above.

But the next day, in the course of Christmas morning, the situation straightened itself out, just as it always does.

Indeed, by ten o’clock, Brown and Jones were playing with the train, and Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jones were making dolls’ clothes, and the boys were smoking cigarettes, and Clarisse and Ulvina were playing cards for their pocket-money.

And upstairs—away up—Grandfather was drinking whiskey and playing the Jew’s harp.

And so Christmas, just as it always does, turned out all right after all.

—Stephen Leacock
from Frenzied Fiction (1918)

The Christmas Ghost

Unemployment
in One of Our Oldest Industries

The other night I was sitting up late—away after nine o’clock—thinking about Christmas because it was getting near at hand. And, like everybody else who muses on that subject, I was thinking of the great changes that have taken place in regard to Christmas. I was contrasting Christmas in the old country house of a century ago, with the fires roaring up the chimneys, and Christmas in the modern apartment on the ninth floor with the gasoline generator turned on for the maid’s bath.

I was thinking of the old stage coach on the snowy road with its roof piled high with Christmas turkeys and a rosy-faced “guard” blowing on a bugle and the passengers getting down every mile or so at a crooked inn to drink hot spiced ale—and I was comparing all that with the upper berth No. 6, car 220, train No. 53.

I was thinking of the Christmas landscape of long ago when night settled down upon it with the twinkle of light from the houses miles apart among the spruce trees, and contrasting the scene with the glare of motor lights upon the highways of today. I was thinking of the lonely highwayman shivering round with his clumsy pistols, and comparing the poor fellow’s efforts with the high class bandits of today blowing up a steel express car with nitroglycerine and disappearing in a roar of gasoline explosions.

In other words I was contrasting yesterday and today. And on the whole yesterday seemed all to the good.

Nor was it only the warmth and romance and snugness of the old Christmas that seemed superior to our days, but Christmas carried with it then a special kind of thrill with its queer terrors, its empty heaths, its lonely graveyards, and its house that stood alone in a wood, haunted.

And thinking of that it occurred to me how completely the ghost business seems to be dying out of our Christmas literature. Not so very long ago there couldn’t be a decent Christmas story or Christmas adventure without a ghost in it, whereas nowadays—

And just at that moment I looked and saw that there was a ghost in the room.

I can’t imagine how he got in, but there he was, sitting in the other easy chair in the dark corner away from the firelight. He had on my own dressing gown and one saw but little of his face.

“Are you a ghost?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “worse luck, I am.”

I noticed as he spoke that he seemed to wave and shiver as if he were made of smoke. I couldn’t help but pity the poor fellow, he seemed so immaterial.

“Do you mind,” he went on, in the same dejected tone, “if I sit here and haunt you for a while?”

“By all means,” I said, “please do.”

“Thanks,” he answered, “I haven’t had anything decent to work on for years and years. This is Christmas eve, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “Christmas Eve.”

“Used to be my busiest night,” the ghost complained, “best night of the whole year—and now—say,” he said, “would you believe it! I went down this evening to that dinner dance they have at the Ritz Carlton and I thought I’d haunt it—thought I’d stand behind one of the tables as a silent specter, the way I used to in King George III’s time—”

“Well?” I said.

“They put me out!” groaned the ghost, “the head waiter came up to me and said that he didn’t allow silent specters in the dining room. I was put out.” He groaned again.

“You seem,” I said, “rather down on your luck?”

“Can you wonder?” said the ghost, and another shiver rippled up and down him. “I can’t get anything to do. Talk of the unemployed—listen!” he went on, speaking with something like animation, “let me tell you the story of my life—”

“Can you make it short?” I said.

“I’ll try. A hundred years ago—”

“Oh, I say!” I protested.

“I committed a terrible crime, a murder on the highway—”

“You’d get six months for that nowadays,” I said.

“I was never detected. An innocent man was hanged. I died but I couldn’t rest. I haunted the house beside the highway where the murder had been done. It had happened on Christmas Eve, and so, every year on that night—”

“I know,” I interrupted, “you were heard dragging round a chain and moaning and that sort of thing; I’ve often read about it.”

“Precisely,” said the ghost, “and for about eighty years it worked out admirably. People became afraid, the house was deserted, trees and shrubs grew thick around it, the wind whistled through its empty chimneys and its broken windows, and at night the lonely wayfarer went shuddering past and heard with terror the sound of a cry scarce human, while a cold sweat—”

“Quite so,” I said, “a cold sweat. And what next?”

“The days of the motor car came and they paved the highways and knocked down the house and built a big garage there, with electricity as bright as day. You can’t haunt a garage, can you? I tried to stick on and do a little groaning, but nobody seemed to pay attention; and anyway, I got nervous about the gasoline. I’m too immaterial to be round where there’s gasoline. A fellow would blow up, wouldn’t he?”

“He might,” I said, “so what happened?”

“Well, one day somebody in the garage actually saw me and he threw a monkey wrench at me and told me to get to hell out of the garage. So I went.”

“And after that?”

“I haunted round; I’ve kept on haunting round, but it’s no good, there’s nothing in it. Houses, hotels, I’ve tried it all. Once I thought that if I couldn’t make a hit any other way, at least I could haunt children. You remember how little children used to live in terror of ghosts and see them in the dark corners of their bedrooms? Well, I admit it was a low down thing to do, but I tried that.”

“And it didn’t work?”

“Work! I should say not. I went one night to a bedroom where a couple of little boys were sleeping and I started in with a few groans and then half materialized myself, so that I could just be seen. One of the kids sat up in bed and nudged the other and said, ‘Say! I do believe there’s a ghost in the room!’ And the other said, ‘Hold on; don’t scare him. Let’s get the radio set and see if it’ll go right through him.’

“They both hopped out of bed as brisk as bees and one called downstairs, ‘Dad, we’ve got a ghost up here! We don’t know whether he’s just an emanation or partially material. We’re going to stick the radio into him—’ Believe me,” continued the ghost, “that was all I waited to hear. Electricity just knocks me edgeways.”

He shuddered. Then he went on.

“Well it’s been like that ever since—nowhere to go and nothing to haunt. I’ve tried all the big hotels, railway stations, everywhere. Once I tried to haunt a Pullman car, but I had hardly started before I observed a notice, ‘Quiet is requested for those already retired,’ and I had to quit.”

“Well, then,” I said, “why don’t you just get immaterial or dematerial or whatever you call it, and keep so? Why not go away wherever you belong and stay there?”

“That’s the worst of it,” answered the ghost, “they won’t let us. They haul us back. These spiritualists have learned the trick of it and they just summon us up any time they like. They get a dollar apiece for each materialization, but what do we get?”

The ghost paused and a sort of spasm went all through him. “Gol darn it,” he exclaimed, “they’re at me now. There’s a group of fools somewhere sitting round a table at a Christmas Eve party and they’re calling up a ghost just for fun—a darned poor notion of fun, I call it—I’d like to—like to—”

But his voice trailed off. He seemed to collapse as he sat and my dressing gown fell on the floor. And at that moment I heard the ringing of the bells that meant that it was Christmas midnight, and I knew that the poor fellow had been dragged off to work.

—Stephen Leacock
from Winnowed Wisdom (1926)

Christmas Shopping

Let me say right at the start that I am devoted to Christmas—no time in the year like it. It’s all brightness and light and Christmas trees with candles, and holly berries—with little children dancing in a ring and every one pretending to be a fine fellow, and pretty nearly succeeding in it.

I was brought up on it; weren’t you? It was a sort of family tradition—house all hung with mottoes of MERRY CHRISTMAS, and cotton wool and red flannel … You had all that in your family, too, didn’t you, and your brother Jim always gave your brother Dick a necktie every Christmas, just the same as the one Dick gave to Jim, and your mother paid for both of them—didn’t she, so as to teach the children to be generous?

Quite so; and in that case you’ll agree with me that of all the side issues and extras that go with Christmas and make it what it is, there isn’t one that for warmth and character is in it with Christmas shopping! The pleasure of anticipation, that warm glow about the heart, eh! That joy in generous giving far ahead of getting anything for yourself. That’s you, isn’t it? Yes, I’m sure it is.

And, of course, as we all know, the anticipation of pleasure has in it a higher quality, in reality, than the pleasure itself. Packing a picnic lunch is better than a picnic, getting fishing tackle together is better than fishing, and looking over a travel folder called Five Days in Sunny Jamaica is better than living there,

So, come on out into the street in our imagination and let’s go Christmas shopping.

What a picture it all calls up—the clean fresh air, the streets as light as day and all full of people, the big snowflakes falling—never so big and never so slow in coming down as at Christmas time—they hate to land and miss the rest of it … Snowflakes falling on the laughing crowd, on the little “tots” holding their mothers’ hands, and falling on the colored hoods and the glistening hair of the pretty girls—it takes a snowflake to pick out the prettiest … All moving, swaying, laughing, talking, and going more or less nowhere! … Such is Christmas shopping on a winter evening.

Notice, while the picture is still before us, how all the people in the Christmas crowd of the streets are somehow lifted out of their common selves and idealized. Sour old devils of “fathers” have dropped off thirty years of age and thirty pounds of sin, every woman looks like mother, and all the girls—I swear it’s not the snowflakes—have turned pretty—and the little “tots” just mentioned—it’s hard to realize how often in our home life we’ve called them “little pups.”

Christmas shopping for me! As I sit here in my club writing about it, the thing gets hold of me. I’m going to do it this year. I’ve purposely left it all till this, the last evening before Christmas, when I am free to go at it, and as soon as I have scratched off this writing I shall go out and join the glad throng,

First—be very careful about that idea of starting shopping early in the year, right back in January or February, when things are being sold off. I tried that a year or so ago. There’s nothing in it. People had so often showed me things that they had “picked up” in January! Well, you know how words impress you and the idea of just “picking things up” makes you feel terribly superior.

People talk also of getting things “for a song,” though that’s mostly when they go abroad and bring back some pottery from Italy. That’s too far to go for Christmas.

Anyway, I went out in January and picked up a birdcage and a book called The Bible Lands of Palestine and a pair of braces (boy’s size). I admit the things were cheap. The birdcage was only three and six and it was worth thirty shillings. The man in the shop admitted this himself, but it’s been no good to me. I know no one with a bird. People don’t seem to keep birds now. Yet this is a fine cage, big enough for a penguin, with a bar for it to swing on and little places where you put in food and water, and other little places where you take out whatever you take out. Too bad, I can’t use it. I may offer it in a raffle for a charity … however, let it go.

The Bible Lands of Palestine was a beautiful-looking book, fine binding and lovely illustrations—one of someone bathing, not naked, of course, in a lovely flat river with lovely sand beside it and lovely little sheep or lambs nibbling the daintiest of grass—you know how pink and yellow and dainty Palestine is. There was another picture of men in a boat on a lake, with tossing waves; in fact it’s getting pretty rough. I couldn’t quite make out the idea. It might have been a dinghy race, only the boat looked too round and slow. Perhaps they were just out for a sail … All I mean is that it was a lovely book, and I was just wrapping it up to give away when I saw on the front blank page, very dim, but still readable, the inscription. The Reverend James Peabody from his Mother … I started to rub it out and had got it pretty well off, but I went on rubbing too far and saw another inscription, The Reverend John Somebody from his Mother … and under that another. The Reverend Thomas Something from his Mother. I thought of cutting the page out, but it was no good as there were more half-rubbed out inscriptions on the next one, to more clergymen from their mothers; and beyond that there seemed to be, still more dim, inscriptions that ended “from her affectionate son.” So they must have passed the book round both ways … Of course, I still have the book and have the pleasure of looking at the pictures—that one I mentioned of the dinghy in rough weather and another of a man carrying a huge bed on his back—for a bet, evidently … But it’s no good for Christmas.

The other item was the braces—three shillings and worth ten shillings, suitable for a boy of fourteen, but with a little wheel to jack them up to a boy of sixteen. Boys grow so fast; all mothers and fathers will get the idea of that little wheel. But I want to speak about these three-shilling braces, and I want to speak seriously and especially to mothers and fathers. That’s no present to give to a boy, and you know it! You don’t understand me? Oh yes, you do. You’ve no right to give a boy something useful—something he’s got to have. To give a boy for Christmas a pair of braces, or six collars, or an overcoat, or a pair of winter gloves, or anything that’s useful and that he has to have and that you’ve got to buy for him sooner or later, is just a lowdown trick unworthy of the spirit of Christmas.

With little girls, of course, it’s quite different. They’re easy. You see, the little pups love finery, and you can give them ribbons, laces, shoes—anything. They’re just inexhaustible. But when a boy thinks of Christmas he knows just what he wants. I mean, not the particular thing, but the kind of properties and qualities that it’s got to have. It has to be something more or less mechanical, more or less mysterious, with either wheels in it or electricity, a something that “goes”—you know what I mean. Well, next time you want to buy a Christmas present for a little boy, you go to the toy department of any big store and say to the man—now remember, not to a woman, she can’t understand—“I want to buy for a little boy something that goes when you start it, has mechanism and an element of the mysterious, either cogged wheels or a battery …” And he’ll say, “Exactly!” and lead you right to it. There it is, take it out of its box—boys’ presents have to be big—it’s marked COGGO! The New Mechanico-Thermic Wonder! … Can’t you see the fascination of it?

That reminds me—you don’t mind my telling a story in the middle of an essay; I’m just writing as I go—years and years ago I got one of those things to give to my little son at Christmas. It was sent up to the house that evening when the child was asleep. But three (middle-aged) professors were dining with me, when the big parcel with COGGO was handed in, and one, a professor of medieval history, said, “Let’s look at it.” Then another, professor of Roman Law, said, “How does it go?” and the third, a professor of mechanics, said, “I think this way.” So I said, “Wait a minute, we’ll clear the table.” But they said, “No, put it on the floor—more space.” We had a fine time with it, till we broke it.

So you see—I’m speaking here to fathers only—if you do buy the boy one of these big mechanical toys remember that even if they are expensive you yourself can have a lot of fun with them. That ought to count, eh? And not only yourself. Ask in your clergyman and any J.P. or general or Member of Parliament that you know. They’ll enjoy it …

But I repeat—don’t buy the useful things. Those braces—I never gave them away. I have them still. As I stood with them in my hand thinking where to send them, my mind conjured up a picture of how I felt, long ago, over sixty years ago, when I opened my stocking one Christmas and found, all wrapped up in boxes and parcels that might have been filled with magic, just such junk as that. There was a little round hard box with a tight lid that might have opened out to be magic music, or goodness knows what—for a child’s imagination outstrips reality—but it was only collars. I had hard work to choke back tears. And after that—flat and long and mysterious—was a box that might have held—why, anything! Derringer pistols, Cherokee daggers, anything … But did it? No. It had in it a pair of braces just like these, wheel and all. That broke me down …

There is no blame; all parents do it, must do it, in such a crowded family as ours was, with a census that went up each year. But at least let me plead for some one present, however trivial, with the true touch in it of the magic of the mysterious … My own case I wrote up and wrote off long ago, as a story, “Hoodoo McFiggin’s Christmas,” in my book Literary Lapses, where it stands as a warning.

Did I give those braces away? No, sir. Give them to some poor child? No, sir, there is no child so poor that I should wish that evil gift upon him. I wear those braces myself, wheel and all between my shoulder blades, as a monk wears a hair shirt, to remind me of the true spirit of Christmas …

But, per contra, in the other direction, never make the mistake of asking a boy—I mean a little, little boy, too young for discretion—of asking him what he’d want for Christmas. If you do, he’ll say right off, no hesitation, a horse, and a baby motorcar, and a big radio, like grandmamma’s. Then, where are you? But come back again to the street. Let’s go shopping.

And here we reach the question of buying Christmas presents at any time through the year, just when you happen to see anything that looks nice for somebody. It is a good plan, only don’t you find—I speak just as between you and me—that the things you see, or at least, that attract your attention, are the ones that are just right for yourself? You see in a shop window a pipe, a beautiful thing in a case, and you say to yourself, “The very thing for a Christmas present.” Your conscience says, “Present for whom?” But you stifle it. At first you try to call it “Charlie’s pipe,” meaning it for your brother. But, well, Charlie never sees it. It’s gone the way of George’s fishing-rod, and the nickel-plated cigar-lighter your nephew never saw. Still, it’s all right. You can make it up to them later. You can do as I am doing tonight the moment I finish this writing, just go out and have one big grand unselfish burst of present buying, among all the little tots and the laughing crowds I spoke of. Something for everybody this time! No one forgotten, I think I’ll write them down on a list—you’ve tried it, haven’t you? George and Mary (something for their house, they haven’t been married long); Charlie, a pipe; my great-niece Nancy (three and a half; you ought to see her), either a pearl necklace, or, no, I’ll see when I get there …

And this time there must be no hesitation, no doubt.

That’s fatal to Christmas shopping. I look back over bygone years and I think of all the presents I meant to give but didn’t. No doubt, as you’ll say at once, I’m all the better man for meaning to give them. I admit it. But I think in that respect I don’t need to get any better still.

Everybody, I am sure, has had the same experience of presents never given. There was a man many many years ago who did me a great kindness. He took my classes when I was a schoolmaster and enabled me to get off for three weeks to write on college examinations. When I went to pay him he wouldn’t take anything. It meant a lot to me, both ways, But I didn’t thank him over effusively or show too much emotion. I meant that actions should speak louder than words. I decided to give him a watch at Christmas. Then I went a little further and decided on a gold watch, the kind of watch he would never buy for himself, for he was not well off—one to last all his life. The watch being gold, I couldn’t give it to him that Christmas; but what’s a year, or what was it then? His watch was coming, and it gave me pleasure, whenever I met him, to think that once given he had his watch for life. So he would have had—but he didn’t. The Christmases went by; the time never came when I could quite, or not without—well, you understand. I never gave it to him. And now I never can; where he is, he’s too happy to need it.

But it was a kind thought, anyway. I’ve had quite a few like that. There is a man going round in Montreal wearing, for me, though he doesn’t know it, a smoking jacket that I nearly gave him the Christmas after he got married. There is, or was, a retired clergyman who nearly qualified for an encyclopedia; and ever so many of my young married friends have imaginary sets of Shakespeare. But I needn’t explain it. I am sure that you yourself, and everybody else, have a list of these gifts that never were given. It is very sweet of you to have thought of them. Perhaps this Christmas you might make good on one or two. Change the encyclopedia to a fountain-pen or, if you like, to a pencil sharpener; only give it, don’t wait. But it is getting late—the shops will close soon …

I append this note to what I wrote above. Too bad. Another Christmas gone wrong. I had no idea that the crowds were as thick as that, and as noisy. And the children—the ones I called tots—I don’t think people ought to be allowed to bring out children in such bunches as that! And those things the little devils blow into! That’s against the law. The noise, all yelling at once and laughing! What is there to laugh about? Get into the shops—you can’t! They’re jammed to the doorway. Why can’t they let a man with a list just walk in and pick out what he wants and go home? No place for him. I didn’t even try to get through the crowds; in fact, I didn’t get more than fifty feet round the main street corner.

Now that I’m back in the club I’ll have to do the best I can about presents. I have, right here in the club, a bottle of Scotch whiskey for George and Mary—John, the hall porter, suggested it; he’s from Scotland. At any rate, I have the bottle all wrapped up to take home with me, and the birdcage I spoke of, I’ll find someone for that. Later, Charlie can have The Bible Lands of Palestine, and for little Nancy—either a bottle of port or two hundred cigarettes.

I’ve spoiled another Christmas by too much planning and romancing, a mistake we all make, loading it up with sentiment instead of getting down to facts. Next year I’ll know better.

Yes, John, put the port under my other arm and the cigarettes in my overcoat pocket. Good night … Merry Christmas!

—Stephen Leacock
from My Remarkable Uncle (1942)

Editha’s Christmas Burglar

It was the night before Christmas, and Editha was all agog. It was all so exciting, so exciting! From her little bed up in the nursery she could hear Mumsey and Daddy downstairs putting the things on the tree and jamming her stocking full of broken candy and oranges.

“Hush!” Daddy was speaking. “Eva,” he was saying to Mumsey, “it seems kind of silly to put this ten-dollar gold-piece that Aunt Issac sent to Editha into her stocking. She is too young to know the value of money. It would just be a bauble to her. How about putting it in with the household money for this month? Editha would then get some of the food that was bought with it and we would be ten dollars in.”

Dear old Daddy! Always thinking of someone else! Editha wanted to jump out of bed right then and there and run down and throw her arms about his neck, perhaps shutting off his wind.

“You are right, as usual, Hal,” said Mumsey. “Give me the gold-piece and I will put it in with the house funds.”

“In a pig’s eye I will give you the gold-piece,” replied Daddy. “You would nest it away somewhere until after Christmas and then go out and buy yourself a muff with it. I know you, you old grafter.” And from the sound which followed, Editha knew that Mumsey was kissing Daddy. Did ever a little girl have two such darling parents? And, hugging her Teddy-bear close to her, Editha rolled over and went to sleep.

•     •     •     •     •

She awoke suddenly with the feeling that someone was downstairs. It was quite dark and the radiolite traveling-clock which stood by her bedside said eight o’clock, but, as the radiolite traveling-clock hadn’t been running since Easter, she knew that that couldn’t be the right time. She knew that it must be somewhere between three and four in the morning, however, because the blanket had slipped off her bed, and the blanket always slipped off her bed between three and four in the morning.

And now to take up the question of who it was downstairs. At first she thought it might be Daddy. Often Daddy sat up very late working on a case of Scotch and at such times she would hear him downstairs counting to himself. But whoever was there now was being very quiet. It was only when he jammed against the china-cabinet or joggled the dinner-gong that she could tell that anyone was there at all. It was evidently a stranger. Of course, it might be that the old folks had been right all along and that there really was a Santa Claus after all, but Editha dismissed this supposition at once. The old folks had never been right before and what chance was there of their starting in to be right now, at their age? None at all. It couldn’t be Santa, the jolly old soul!

It must be a burglar then! Why, to be sure! Burglars always come around on Christmas Eve and little yellow-haired girls always get up and go down in their nighties and convert them. Of course! How silly of Editha not to have thought of it before!

With a bound the child was out on the cold floor, and with another bound she was back in bed again. It was too cold to be fooling around without slippers on. Reaching down by the bedside, she pulled in her little fur foot-pieces which Cousin Mabel had left behind by mistake the last time she visited Editha, and drew them on her tiny feet. Then out she got and started on tiptoe for the stairway.

She did hope that he would be a good-looking burglar and easily converted, because it was pretty gosh-darned cold, even with slippers on, and she wished to save time.

As she reached the head of the stairs, she could look down into the living-room where the shadow of the tree stood out black against the gray light outside. In the doorway leading into the dining room stood a man’s figure, silhouetted against the glare of an old-fashioned burglar’s lantern which was on the floor. He was rattling silverware. Very quietly, Editha descended the stairs until she stood quite close to him.

“Hello, Mr. Man!” she said.

The burglar looked up quickly and reached for his gun.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked.

“I’se Editha,” replied the little girl in the sweetest voice she could summon, which wasn’t particularly sweet at that as Editha hadn’t a very pretty voice.

“You’s Editha, is youse?” replied the burglar. “Well, come on down here. Grandpa wants to speak to you.”

“Youse is not my Drandpa,” said the tot, getting her baby and tough talk slightly mixed. “Youse is a dreat, bid burglar.”

“All right, kiddy,” replied the man. “Have it your own way. But come on down. I want ter show yer how yer kin make smoke come outer yer eyes. It’s a Christmas game.”

“This guy is as good as converted already,” thought Editha to herself. “Right away he starts wanting to teach me games. Next he’ll be telling me I remind him of his little girl at home.”

So with a light heart she came the rest of the way downstairs, and stood facing the burly stranger.

“Sit down, Editha,” he said, and gave her a hearty push which sent her down heavily on the floor. “And stay there, or I’ll mash you one on that baby nose of yours.”

This was not in the schedule as Editha had read it in the books, but it doubtless was this particular burglar’s way of having a little fun. He did have nice eyes, too.

“Dat’s naughty to do,” she said, scoldingly.

“Yeah?” said the burglar, and sent her spinning against the wall. “I guess you need attention, kid. You can’t be trusted.” Whereupon he slapped the little girl. Then he took a piece of rope out of his bag and tied her up good and tight, with a nice bright bandana handkerchief around her mouth, and trussed her up on the chandelier.

“Now hang there,” he said, “and make believe you’re a Christmas present, and if you open yer yap, I’ll set fire to yer.”

Then, filling his bag with the silverware and Daddy’s imitation sherry, Editha’s burglar tiptoed out by the door. As he left, he turned and smiled. “A Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night,” he whispered, and was gone.

And when Mumsey and Daddy came down in the morning, there was Editha up on the chandelier, sore as a crab. So they took her down and spanked her for getting out of bed without permission.

—Robert Benchley
from Pluck and Luck (1925)

Holiday! Holiday!

A Christmas Story

The hot sun beat down on the Plaza. Little Miguel O’Rourke felt terrible. Those huijos! That old caballerizo! He should never have touched them. They were not meant for little boys five years old. But on the night before the Feast of the Seven Mittens one must do something, even if it is only to kill one’s uncle and throw his legs away. August was the month of the Feast of the Seven Mittens, and August is the month of love the world over.

Suddenly Miguel was awakened by a rough shout, and looking behind him he saw a lumberjack who had evidently lost his way. The poor thing was so frightened that he was darting back and forth, not knowing whether he was afoot, horseback, or good red herring. Lumberjacks usually live in Maine, you know, and here it was nearly half-past eight.

“Where are you going, Doctor Melcher?” asked Miguel. Miguel always called strangers “Doctor Melcher” because it was Doctor Melcher who had once given him that nasty medicine.

The rough old lumberjack looked down at the little boy. “Wa-a-ll, pardner,” he said, “I ain’t much on sentiment, as you ought to know by this time, but it just kinder seemed to me that I ought to bring something to Little Wheel-Dust, the golden-haired daughter of my old side-kick who was left with me for dead that night eleven years ago in the old shack in Calgary.” So saying, the old miner pulled out of his pocket a tiny torpedo with “I Love You” painted on it. “It’s for Little Wheel-Dust,” he said simply, and fainted.

Now this was a trying situation for a young lad of Miguel O’Rourke’s age, whatever it was. To be left with a torpedo would be bad enough, but to have an old lumberjack lying in the hot sun of the Plaza was unthinkable. And on St. Valentine’s Day, too!

Little Miguel sat sorrowfully by the tiny pile of faded flowers which had once been men like himself. “Thanksgiving,” he murmured. “I wish I had some cozy home to go to on this day of all days. I wish I had some turkey.”

Hardly had he spoken when with a great swish a rug appeared before him on which was seated a little old man in the uniform of a Chief Petty Officer. “I have just heard your wish, Little Orson,” he said.

“Little Miguel,” corrected Miguel.

“Little Miguel,” said the C.P.O. “My mother’s name was Orson,” he explained, “Ruth Orson; and every Eastertide I find myself calling people ‘Orson.’”

“That’s quite all right,” said Miguel; “my mother’s name was Ruth Orson, too, so I know how it is.” And he smiled a crooked little smile.

“I have just heard your wish, Orson,” continued the little old man, “your wish that you might have a Thanksgiving turkey, and so I hopped on my rug right away to come and tell you that we haven’t got a turkey left in the house. How about a little roast-beef? It’s very nice today.”

“I would love some roast-beef,” said Miguel, “if you will see to it that all the pits are taken out first. I choked on a pit once.”

“Before we go,” said the C.P.O., “I want you to make sure that you are dressed warmly enough. Remember what day it is, and in all your merrymaking don’t forget that you are alive and happy today because one hundred and fifty years ago now your great-great-grandfather and his brave associates met in Philadelphia and drew up that document which was to establish liberty in America and insure you and me against tyranny from an English king. I think that the least we can do before opening up the bottle is to bow our heads and think very hard for three minutes on the bravery and devotion of Amerigo Vespucci.”

And, as they stood with tears streaming down their little faces, suddenly a clash and clang of chimes rang out on the frosty air and the glorious cadence of “Integer Vitae” filled their very being with its grandeur.

“A Merry Christmas,” said the little old man.

“And a Merry Christmas to you, too,” said Little Miguel.

Clash—clang! Clash—clang!

—Robert Benchley
from Pluck and Luck (1925)

Here Come the Children

Many parents are confronted this month by the problem of homing children. Just as you have got the house picked up after Thanksgiving, the private schools and colleges let their charges loose again for two or three weeks because of Christmas or some such pretext, and before you know it Spencer and Beth and eight or ten of their little playmates land on you, palpitating for entertainment. What, as the question runs, to do?

There was a time when all you had to do to entertain the kiddies was to string some festoons of red paper from the chandelier to the corners of the table and cry “Surprise, surprise!” when they came into the room. Then perhaps some of those godawful snapping arrangements with paper hats and mottoes concealed inside a percussion cap would throw the young folks into such a state of excitement that they couldn’t eat for a week afterward. Those who were able to stand up after this enervating sport were allowed to indulge their sex appetites in a game of “Post-Office.” And when their parents came for them at a quarter to nine, it was voted that a delirious time had been had and thank you very much, Mrs. Hosmer.

But if you want to hear the merry sound of children’s mocking laughter, just try one of those parties on them today. The chances are that they will start throwing rolls and olive pits at you and leave the house with curses on their lips. The children who are coming home from school today for the holidays are built of sterner stuff. They want red meat. The holidays mean to them something like what King Manuel of Portugal used to go off on when he would disappear from home and not show up for ten days.

In view of this change in standards of entertainment, it would perhaps be well to line up a few ways of keeping the young folks happy while they are in our midst celebrating the Nativity. For, after all, we must keep in touch with the children, because some day they will get all of Grandma’s money.

This is one of the most successful entertainments for boys and girls just home from the exacting confinement of school. It is called a “Paul Jones” party, because Paul Jones was a notorious souse. It was even whispered at one time that he was the father of the American navy, but no one was ever able to prove it.

In order to prepare the house for this party, it will be necessary to take down all the pictures and draperies and move all the furniture out. The corners in every room should be banked and a tarpaulin stretched over the floors.

A lemonade should be prepared, consisting of lemon juice, gin, vermouth, bitters, and a little crushed mint. For the older children something with bacardi is nice, or perhaps, if they are children from the neighborhood whom you know very well, just straight Scotch.

Begin the party at 11:30, which will give them time to go to the theater first. Do not be discouraged at their scornful air as they enter the house. They are that way to everybody. The lemonade will soon fix that, and before the evening is over they may warm up to the extent of coming over and speaking to you personally.

Paul Whiteman’s orchestra should have been imported from New York for the occasion and should be made to play continuously. Nothing short of Paul Whiteman’s will do, and if even they aren’t playing their best, considerable comment will be elicited from the tiny guests.

After sufficient dancing has been indulged in, the big game of the evening may be suggested. The company is divided into couples and each couple is provided with a high-powered roadster. Starting in relays from the porte-cochère, they should be sent off in different directions. The idea of the game is to see which couple can stay out the longest. The winners will be presented with a marriage license and their flat silver.

—Robert Benchley
from Pluck and Luck (1925)

A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas

Sooner or later at every Christmas party, just as things are beginning to get good, someone shuts his eyes, puts his head back and moans softly: “Ah, well, this isn’t like the old days. We don’t seem to have any good old-fashioned Christmases any more.” To which the answer from my corner of the room is: “All right! That suits me!”

Just what they have in mind when they say “old-fashioned Christmas” you never can pin them down to telling. “Lots of snow,” they mutter, “and lots of food.” Yet, if you work it right, you can still get plenty of snow and food today. Snow, at any rate.

Then there seems to be some idea of the old-fashioned Christmas being, of necessity, in the country. It doesn’t make any difference whether you were raised on a farm or whether your ideas of a rural Christmas were gleaned from pictures in old copies of “Harper’s Young People,” you must give folks to understand that such were the surroundings in which you spent your childhood holidays. And that, ah, me, those days will never come again!

Well, supposing you get your wish sometime. Supposing, let us say, your wife’s folks who live up in East Russet, Vermont, write and ask you to come up and bring the children for a good old-fashioned Christmas, “while we are all still together,” they add cheerily with their flair for putting everybody in good humor.

Hurray, hurray! Off to the country for Christmas! Pack up all the warm clothes in the house, for you will need them up there where the air is clean and cold. Snow-shoes? Yes, put them in, or better yet, Daddy will carry them. What fun! Take along some sleigh-bells to jangle in case there aren’t enough on the pung. There must be jangling sleigh-bells. And whiskey for frostbite. Or is it snake-bite that whiskey is for? Anyway, put it in! We’re off! Good-by, all! Good-by! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-Jangle-Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle- jangle-jangle-jangle!

In order to get to East Russet you take the Vermont Central as far as Twitchell’s Falls and change there for Torpid River junction, where a spur line takes you right into Gormley. At Gormley you are met by a buck-board which takes you back to Torpid River junction again. By this time a train or something has come in which will wait for the local from Besus. While waiting for this you will have time to send your little boy to school, so that he can finish the third grade.

At East Russet Grandpa meets you with the sleigh. The bags are piled in and Mother sits in front with Lester in her lap while Daddy takes junior and Ga-Ga in back with him and the luggage. Giddap, Esther Girl!

Esther Girl giddaps, and two suitcases fall out. Heigh-ho! Out we get and pick them up, brushing the snow off and filling our cuffs with it as we do so. After all, there is nothing like snow for getting up one’s cuffs. Good clean snow never hurt anyone. Which is lucky, because after you have gone a mile or so, you discover that Ga-Ga is missing. Never mind, she is a self-reliant little girl and will doubtless find her way to the farm by herself. Probably she will be there waiting for you when you arrive.

The farm is situated on a hill about eleven hundred miles from the center of town, just before you get into Canada. If there is a breeze in winter, they get it. But what do they care for breezes, so long as they have the Little Colonel oil-heater in the front room, to make everything cozy and warm within a radius of four inches! And the big open fireplace with the draft coming down it! Fun for everybody!

You are just driving up to the farmhouse in the sleigh, with the entire right leg frozen where the lap robe has slipped out. Grandma is waiting for you at the door and you bustle in, all glowing with good cheer. “Merry Christmas, Grandma!” Lester is cross and Junior is asleep and has to be dragged by the hand upstairs, bumping against each step all the way. It is so late that you decide that you all might as well go to bed, especially as you learn that breakfast is at four-thirty. It usually is at four, but Christmas being a holiday everyone sleeps late.

As you reach the top of the stairs you get into a current of cold air which has something of the quality of the temperature in a nice well-regulated crypt. This is the Bed Room Zone, and in it the thermometer never tops the zero mark from October fifteenth until the middle of May. Those rooms in which no one sleeps are used to store perishable vegetables in, and someone has to keep thumbing the tomatoes and pears every so often to prevent their getting so hard that they crack.

The way to get undressed for bed in one of Grandpa’s bedrooms is as follows: Starting from the foot of the stairs where it is warm, run up two at a time to keep the circulation going as long as possible. Opening the bedroom door with one hand, tear down the curtains from the windows with the other, pick up the rugs from the floor and snatch the spread from the top of the bureau. Pile all these on the bed, cover with the closet door which you have wrenched from its hinges, and leap quickly underneath. It sometimes helps to put on a pair of rubbers over your shoes.

And even when you are in bed, you have no guarantee of going to sleep. Grandpa’s mattresses seem to contain the overflow from the silo, corn-husks, baked-potato skins and long, stringy affairs which feel like pipe cleaners. On a cold night, snuggling down into these is about like snuggling down into a bed of damp pine cones out in the forest.

Then there are Things abroad in the house. Shortly after you get into bed, the stairs start snapping. Next something runs along the roof over your head. You say to yourself: “Don’t be silly. It’s only Santa Claus.” Then it runs along in the wall behind the head of the bed. Santa Claus wouldn’t do that. Down the long hall which leads into the ell of the house you can hear the wind sighing softly, with an occasional reassuring bang of a door.

The unmistakable sound of someone dying in great pain rises from just below the windowsill. It is a sort of low moan, with just a touch of strangulation in it. Perhaps Santa has fallen off the roof. Perhaps that story you once heard about Grandpa’s house having been a hangout for Revolutionary smugglers is true, and one of the smugglers has come back for his umbrella. The only place at a time like this is down under the bedclothes. But the children become frightened and demand to be taken home, and Grandpa has to be called to explain that it is only Blue Bell out in the barn. Blue Bell has asthma, and on a cold night they have to be very patient with her.

Christmas morning dawns cloudy and cold, with the threat of plenty more snow, and, after all, what would Christmas be without snow? You lie in bed for one hour and a quarter trying to figure out how you can get up without losing the covers from around you. A glance at the water pitcher shows that it is time for them to put the red ball up for skating. You think of the nice warm bathroom at home, and decide that you can wait until you get back there before shaving.

This breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men which they look back on with tremendous satisfaction. “When I was a boy, I used to have to break the ice in the pitcher every morning before I could wash,” is said with as much pride as one might say, “When I was a boy I stood at the head of my class.” Just what virtue there is in having to break ice in a pitcher is not evident, unless it lies in their taking the bother to break the ice and wash at all. Anytime that I have to break ice in a pitcher as a preliminary to washing, I go unwashed, that’s all. And Benjamin Franklin and U. S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes can laugh as much as they like. I’m nobody’s fool about a thing like that.

Getting the children dressed is a lot of fun when you have to keep pumping their limbs up and down to keep them from freezing out stiff. The children love it and are just as bright and merry as little pixies when it is time to go downstairs and say “Good morning” to Grandpa and Grandma. The entire family enters the dining-room purple and chattering and exceedingly cross.

After breakfast everyone begins getting dinner. The kitchen being the only warm place in the house may have something to do with it. But before long there are so many potato peelings and turkey feathers and squash seeds and floating bits of pie crust in the kitchen that the womenfolk send you and the children off into the front part of the house to amuse yourselves and get out of the way.

Then what a jolly time you and the kiddies and Grandpa have together! You can either slide on the horsehair sofa, or play “The Wayside Chapel” on the piano (the piano has scroll-work on either side of the music rack with yellow silk showing through), or look out the window and see ten miles of dark gray snow. Perhaps you may even go out to the barn and look at the horses and cows, but really, as you walk down between the stalls, when you have seen one horse or one cow you have seen them all. And besides, the cold in the barn has an added flavor of damp harness leather and musty carriage upholstery which eats into your very marrow.

Of course, there are the presents to be distributed, but that takes on much the same aspect as the same ceremony in the new-fashioned Christmas, except that in the really old-fashioned Christmas the presents weren’t so tricky. Children got mostly mittens and shoes, with a sled thrown in sometimes for dissipation. Where a boy today is bored by three o’clock in the afternoon with his electric grain-elevator and miniature pond with real perch in it, the old-fashioned boy was lucky if he got a copy of “Naval Battles of the War of 1812” and an orange. Now this feature is often brought up in praise of the old way of doing things. “I tell you,” says Uncle Cyp, “the children in my time never got such presents as you get today.” And he seems proud of the fact, as if there were some virtue accruing to him for it. If the children of today can get electric grain-elevators and tin automobiles for Christmas, why aren’t they that much better off than their grandfathers who got only wristlets? Learning the value of money, which seems to be the only argument of the stand-patters, doesn’t hold very much water as a Christmas slogan. The value of money can be learned in just about five minutes when the time comes, but Christmas is not the season.

But to return to the farm, where you and the kiddies and Gramp’ are killing time. You can either bring in wood from the woodshed, or thaw out the pump, or read the books in the bookcase over the writing-desk. Of the three, bringing in the wood will probably be the most fun, as you are likely to burn yourself thawing out the pump, and the list of reading matter on hand includes “The Life and Deeds of General Grant,” “Our First Century,” “Andy’s Trip to Portland,” bound volumes of the Jersey Cattle Breeders’ Gazette and “Diseases of the Horse.” Then there are some old copies of “Round the Lamp” for the years 1850-54 and some colored plates showing plans for the approaching World’s Fair at Chicago.

Thus the time passes, in one round of gayety after another, until you are summoned to dinner. Here all caviling must cease. The dinner lives up to the advertising. If an old-fashioned Christmas could consist entirely of dinner without the old-fashioned bedrooms, the old-fashioned pitcher, and the old-fashioned entertainments, we professional pessimists wouldn’t have a turkey-leg left to stand on. But, as has been pointed out, it is possible to get a good dinner without going up to East Russet, Vt., or, if it isn’t, then our civilization has been a failure.

And the dinner only makes the aftermath seem worse.

According to an old custom of the human race, everyone overeats. Deliberately and with considerable gusto you sit at the table and say pleasantly: “My, but I won?t be able to walk after this. Just a little more of the dark meat, please, Grandpa, and just a dab of stuffing. Oh, dear, that’s too much!” You haven’t the excuse of the drunkard, who becomes oblivious to his excesses after several drinks. You know what you are doing, and yet you make light of it and even laugh about it as long as you can laugh without splitting out a seam.

And then you sit and moan. If you were having a good new-fashioned Christmas you could go out to the movies or take a walk, or a ride, but to be really old-fashioned you must stick close to the house, for in the old days there were no movies and no automobiles and if you wanted to take a walk you had to have the hired man go ahead of you with a snow-shovel and make a tunnel. There are probably plenty of things to do in the country today, and just as many automobiles and electric lights as there are in the city, but you can’t call Christmas with all these improvements “an old-fashioned Christmas.” That’s cheating.

If you are going through with the thing right, you have got to retire to the sitting-room after dinner and sit. Of course, you can go out and play in the snow if you Want to, but you know as well as I do that this playing in the snow is all right when you are small but a bit trying on anyone over thirty. And anyway, it always began to snow along about three in the afternoon an old-fashioned Christmas day, with a cheery old leaden sky overhead and a jolly old gale sweeping around the corners of the house.

No, you simply must sit indoors, in front of a fire if you insist, but nevertheless with nothing much to do. The children are sleepy and snarling. Grandpa is just sleepy. Someone tries to start the conversation, but everyone else is too gorged with food to be able to move the lower jaw sufficiently to articulate. It develops that the family is in possession of the loudest-ticking clock in the world and along about four o’clock it begins to break its own record. A stenographic report of the proceedings would read as follows:

“Ho-hum! I’m sleepy! I shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

“Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock—”

“It seems just like Sunday, doesn’t it?”

“Look at Grandpa! He’s asleep.”

“Here, junior! Don’t plague Grandpa. Let him sleep.”

“Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock—”

“Junior! Let Grandpa alone! Do you want Mamma to take you upstairs?”

“Ho-hum!”

“Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock—”

Louder and louder the clock ticks, until something snaps in your brain and you give a sudden leap into the air with a scream, finally descending to strangle each of the family in turn, and Grandpa as he sleeps. Then, as you feel your end is near, all the warm things you have ever known come back to you, in a flash. You remember the hot Sunday subway to Coney, your trip to Mexico, the bull-fighters of Spain.

You dash out into the snowdrifts and plunge along until you sink exhausted. Only the fact that this article ends here keeps you from freezing to death, with an obituary the next day reading:

“DIED suddenly, at East Russet, Vt., of an old-fashioned Christmas.”

—Robert Benchley
from Benchley Beside Himself (1943)

A Christmas Spectacle

For Use in
Christmas Eve Entertainments
in the Vestry

At the opening of the entertainment the Superintendent will step into the footlights, recover his balance apologetically, and say:

“Boys and girls of the Intermediate Department, parents and friends: I suppose you all know why we are here tonight. (At this point the audience will titter apprehensively). Mrs. Drury and her class of little girls have been working very hard to make this entertainment a success, and I am sure that everyone here tonight is going to have what I overheard one of my boys the other day calling ‘some good time.’ (Indulgent laughter from the little boys). And may I add before the curtain goes up that immediately after the entertainment we want you all to file out into the Christian Endeavor room, where there will be a Christmas tree, ‘with all the fixin’s,’ as the boys say.” (Shrill whistling from the little boys and immoderate applause from everyone).

There will then be a wait of twenty-five minutes, while sounds of hammering and dropping may be heard from behind the curtains. The Boys’ Club orchestra will render the “Poet and Peasant Overture” four times in succession, each time differently.

At last one side of the curtains will be drawn back; the other will catch on something and have to be released by hand; someone will whisper loudly, “Put out the lights,” following which the entire house will be plunged into darkness. Amid catcalls from the little boys, the footlights will at last go on, disclosing:

The windows in the rear of the vestry rather ineffectively concealed by a group of small fir trees on standards, one of which has already fallen over, leaving exposed a corner of the map of Palestine and the list of gold-star classes for November. In the center of the stage is a larger tree, undecorated, while at the extreme left, invisible to everyone in the audience except those sitting at the extreme right, is an imitation fireplace, leaning against the wall.

Twenty-five seconds too early little Flora Rochester will prance out from the wings, uttering the first shrill notes of a song, and will have to be grabbed by eager hands and pulled back. Twenty-four seconds later the piano will begin “The Return of the Reindeer” with a powerful accent on the first note of each bar, and Flora Rochester, Lillian McNulty, Gertrude Hamingham and Martha Wrist will swirl on, dressed in white, and advance heavily into the footlights, which will go out.

There will then be an interlude while Mr. Neff, the sexton, adjusts the connection, during which the four little girls stand undecided whether to brave it out or cry. As a compromise they giggle and are herded back into the wings by Mrs. Drury, amid applause. When the lights go on again, the applause becomes deafening, and as Mr. Neff walks triumphantly away, the little boys in the audience will whistle: “There she goes, there she goes, all dressed up in her Sunday clothes!”

“The Return of the Reindeer” will be started again and the show-girls will reappear, this time more gingerly and somewhat dispirited. They will, however, sing the following, to the music of the “Ballet Pizzicato” from “Sylvia”:

“We greet you, we greet you,

On this Christmas Eve so fine.

We greet you, we greet you,

And wish you a good time.”

They will then turn toward the tree and Flora Rochester will advance, hanging a silver star on one of the branches, meanwhile reciting a verse, the only distinguishable words of which are: “I am Faith so strong and pure—”

At the conclusion of her recitation, the star will fall off.

Lillian McNulty will then step forward and hang her star on a branch, reading her lines in clear tones:

“And I am Hope, a virtue great,

My gift to Christmas now I make,

That children and grownups may hope today

That tomorrow will be a merry Christmas Day.”

The hanging of the third star will be consummated by Gertrude Hamingham, who will get as far as “Sweet Charity I bring to place upon the tree—” at which point the strain will become too great and she will forget the remainder. After several frantic glances toward the wings, from which Mrs. Drury is sending out whispered messages to the effect that the next line begins, “My message bright—” Gertrude will disappear, crying softly.

After the morale of the cast has been in some measure restored by the pianist, who, with great presence of mind, plays a few bars of “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?” to cover up Gertrude’s exit, Martha Wrist will unleash a rope of silver tinsel from the foot of the tree, and, stringing it over the boughs as she skips around in a circle, will say, with great assurance:

“’Round and ’round the tree I go,

Through the holly and the snow

Bringing love and Christmas cheer

Through the happy year to come.”

At this point there will be a great commotion and jangling of sleigh-bells off-stage, and Mr. Creamer, rather poorly disguised as Santa Claus, will emerge from the opening in the imitation fireplace. A great popular demonstration for Mr. Creamer will follow. He will then advance to the footlights, and, rubbing his pillow and ducking his knees to denote joviality, will say thickly through his false beard:

“Well, well, well, what have we here? A lot of bad little boys and girls who aren’t going to get any Christmas presents this year? (Nervous laughter from the little boys and girls). Let me see, let me see! I have a note here from Dr. Whidden. Let’s see what it says. (Reads from a paper on which there is obviously nothing written). ‘If you and the young people of the Intermediate Department will come into the Christian Endeavor room, I think we may have a little surprise for you …’ Well, well, well! What do you suppose it can be? (Cries of ‘I know, I know!’ from sophisticated ones in the audience). Maybe it is a bottle of castor-oil! (Raucous jeers from the little boys and elaborately simulated disgust on the part of the little girls.) Well, anyway, suppose we go out and see? Now if Miss Liftnagle will oblige us with a little march on the piano, we will all form in single file—”

At this point there will ensue a stampede toward the Christian Endeavor room, in which chairs will be broken, decorations demolished, and the protesting Mr. Creamer badly hurt.

This will bring to a close the first part of the entertainment.

—Robert Benchley
from Love Conquers All (1922)

A Christmas Pantomime

For Kiddies and Grown-Ups,
or Neither

The scene is on a snowy plain just outside Wilkes-Barre.

The characters in this pantomime are:

PIERROT | A pierrot
COLUMBINE | A pierrot
CIBOULETTE | A pierrot
LITTLE LAURA | who dreams the dream.

As the curtain rises, something goes wrong; so it has to be lowered again. Twenty-five minute wait while it is fixed.

As the curtain rises, PIERROT is discovered sneaking a drink out of a bottle. He puts the bottle down quickly when he finds out that he has been discovered.

Enter COLUMBINE, awkwardly. She dances over to PIERROT and makes as if to kiss him, but he hits her a terrific one under the eye and knocks her cold. Three thousand gnomes enter and drag her off. One gnome (Alaska) stays behind and dances a little.

End of the Show:
Everybody Out!

•     •     •     •     •

On thinking it over, a Christmas pantomime doesn’t seem to be just what is needed. You can get a Christmas pantomime anywhere. In fact, don’t you? So let’s not do a Christmas pantomime. Let’s just have some fun and get to bed early.

Let’s tell some Yuletide stories!

I know a good Christmas story. It seems there was a man who came to a farmer’s house late on Christmas Eve and asked if the farmer could put him up for the night.

“Ich habe kein Zimmern,” sagte der Farmer, “aber Sie können mit Baby schlafen.” (“I have no rooms,” said the farmer, “but you may sleep with the baby if you wish.”) So the man—

I guess that isn’t about Christmas, though. You can tell it as if it were about Christmas, however, by putting that in about it’s being Christmas Eve when the man came to the farmhouse. But it really wasn’t Christmas Eve in the original story and I couldn’t deceive you.

Games are good on Christmas Eve. I know some good games. One that we used to play when I was a boy was called “Bobbing for Grandpa.” All you need is a big tub full of water, or gin, and a grandfather. Grandpa gets into the tub and ducks his head under the water. Then everyone steals softly out of the room and goes to the movies. You ought to be back by eleven-fifteen at the latest. Then you all rush into the room, pell-mell, and surprise the old gentleman.

Oh, I don’t know but what the pantomime was best, after all. You can get more of the spirit of Christmas into a pantomime. Let’s go back and do some more of that old pantomime. You surely remember the pantomime?

•     •     •     •     •

CIBOULETTE enters carrying a transparency which reads: “This is Christmas and You Are Going to Be Merry, and Like It, Too. … Toyland Chamber of Commerce.” She dances around a bit and finally finds a good place to exit, which she does, thank God!

PIERROT awakes and sees his image in the pool. He goes right back to sleep again.

This brings every character on except RINTINTIN and there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for bringing him on at all. However, he insists and comes on, dancing across the stage to where PIERROT is sitting. This cleans up the entire cast and after PIERROT has danced around the sleeping COLUMBINE once or twice, something in the manner of a dying rosebud, which he claims to represent, the curtains come together again and we are left flat, with only about half of our Christmas Eve over and nothing more to do before bedtime.

•     •     •     •     •

Heigh-ho! Perhaps we can get Mr. Rodney to tell us some ghost stories. Mr. Rodney, please!

MR. RODNEY:  Well, children. Here it is Christmas Eve and no one has pulled the Christmas Carol yet. If you will all draw up close and stop your necking, I will at least start … Stop, there is someone at the door. You answer, Alfred, it’s probably for you.

ALFRED:  No, Mr. Rodney, it’s a little old man in a red coat and a white beard who says he’s Santa Claus.

MR. RODNEY:  Send for the police. I’ll Santa Claus him.

At this moment , SANTA CLAUS himself enters. He is a tall, thin man, with black side-whiskers, and wears a raincoat and a derby.

SANTA CLAUS:  My name is Mortimer, George Pearson Mortimer. A lot of silly people call me “Santa Claus” and it makes me pretty mad, I can tell you. Santa Claus, indeed! Just because one year, a long time ago, I got a little stewed and hired a sleigh and some reindeer and drove around town dropping presents down chimneys. I was arrested at the corner of State and Market streets and when they took me to the station-house I didn’t want to give my right name; so I gave “Santa Claus” and thought it very funny. The trouble that got me into!

MR. RODNEY:  Do you mean to tell us that there is no such person as Santa Claus?

SANTA CLAUS:  Yes—or rather no!

(MR. RODNEY bursts into tears.)

MR. RODNEY stops crying to listen. “Hark, what is that?” he says.

“It’s the sun on the marshes, Mr. Rodney,” they all say in unison and the curtain comes down on the final scene of the pantomime.

•     •     •     •     •

In this scene, PIERROT comes to life again and revisits the old haunts of his boyhood where he used to spend Christmas years and years ago. First he comes to the old Christmas turkey, which is much too old by now for any fun. Then he sees the Little Girl That He Used to Play With in His Holidays. She is now the mother of three children and engaged to be married. But still PIERROT seems dissatisfied. He is very evidently looking for something, searching high and low. First he looks in his vest pockets, then in his coat pockets. Finally he looks in his trousers pockets. But whatever it is, he cannot find it.

“What are you looking for?” asks CIBOULETTE, voicing the sentiments of the entire gathering.

“I can’t seem to remember where I put the check the coat room girl gave me for my hat and coat,” he answers. “I could swear that I put it right in here with my old theater-ticket stubs.”

“I didn’t give you any check,” says the coat room girl. “I know your face.”

PIERROT laughs at his mistake as

THE CURTAIN FALLS

—Robert Benchley
from Pluck and Luck (1925)

Home for the Holidays

As a pretty tribute to that element of our population which is under twenty-two years of age, these are called “the Holidays.”

This is the only chance that the janitors of the schools and colleges have to soak the floors of the recitation halls with oil to catch the dust of the next semester, and while this is being done there is nothing to do with the students but to send them home for a week or two. Thus it happened that the term “holidays” is applied to that period of the year when everybody else is working just twice as hard and twice as long during the week to make up for that precious day which must be lost to the Sales Campaign or the Record Output on Christmas Day.

For those who are home from school and college it is called, in the catalogues of their institutions, a “recess” or “vacation,” and the general impression is allowed to get abroad among the parents that it is to be a period of rest and recuperation. Arthur and Alice have been working so hard at school or college that two weeks of good quiet home-life and home cooking will put them right on their feet again, ready to pitch into that chemistry course in which, owing to an incompetent instructor, they did not do very well last term.

That the theory of rest during vacation is fallacious can be proved by hiding in the coat closet of the home of any college or school youth home for Christmas recess. Admission to the coat closet may be forced by making yourself out to be a government official or an inspector of gas meters. Once hidden among the overshoes, you will overhear the following little earnest drama, entitled “Home for the Holidays.”

There was a banging of the front door, and Edgar has arrived. A round of kisses, an exchange of health reports, and Edgar is bounding upstairs.

“Dinner in half an hour,” says Mother.

“Sorry,” shouts Edgar from the bath-tub, “but I’ve got to go out to the Whortleberry’s to a dinner dance. Got the bid last week. Say, have I got any dress-studs at home here? Mine are in my trunk.”

Father’s studs are requisitioned and the family cluster at Edgar’s door to slide in a few conversational phrases while he is getting the best of his dress shirt.

“How have you been?” (Three guesses as to who it is that asks this.)

“Oh, all right. Say, have I got any pumps at home? Mine are in the trunk. Where are those old ones I had last summer?”

“Don’t you want me to tie your tie for you?” (Two guesses as to who it is that asks this.)

“No, thanks. Can I get my laundry done by tomorrow night? I’ve got to go out to the Clamps’ at Short Neck for over the weekend to a bobsledding party, and when I get back from there Mrs. Dibble is giving a dinner and theater party.”

“Don’t you want to eat a little dinner here before you go to the Whortleberry’s?” (One guess as to who it is that asks this.)

But Edgar has bounded down the stairs and left the Family to comfort each other with such observations as “He looks tired,” “I think that he has filled out a little,” or “I wonder if he’s studying too hard.”

You might stay in the coat-closet for the entire two weeks and not hear much more of Edgar than this. His parents don’t. They catch him as he is going up and down stairs and while he is putting the studs into his shirt, and are thankful for that. They really get into closer touch with him while he is at college, for he writes them a weekly letter then.

Nerve-racking as this sort of life is to the youth who is supposed to be resting during his vacation, it might be even more wearing if he were to stay within the Family precincts. Once in a while one of the parties for which he has been signed up falls through, and he is forced to spend the evening at home. At first it is somewhat embarrassing to be thrown in with strangers for a meal like that, but, as the evening wears on, the ice is broken and things assume a more easy swing. The Family begins to make remarks.

“You must stand up straighter, my boy,” says Father, placing his hand between Edgar’s shoulder blades. “You are slouching badly. I noticed it as you walked down the street this morning.”

“Do all the boys wear soft-collared shirts like that?” asks Mother. “Personally, I think that they look very untidy. They are all right for tennis and things like that, but I wish you’d put on a starched collar when you are in the house. You never see Elmer Quiggly wearing a collar like that. He always looks neat.”

“For heaven’s sake, Eddie,” says Sister, “take off that tie. You certainly do get the most terrific-looking things to put around your neck. It looks like a Masonic apron. Let me go with you when you buy your next batch.”

By this time Edgar has his back against the wall and is breathing hard. What do these folks know of what is being done?

If it is not family heckling it may be that even more insidious trial, the third degree. This is usually inflicted by semi-relatives and neighbors. The formulae are something like this:

“Well, how do you like your school?”

“I suppose you have plenty of time for pranks, eh?”

“What a good time you boys must have! It isn’t so much what you get out of books that will help you in after life, I have found, but the friendships made in college. Meeting so many boys from all parts of the country—why, it’s a liberal education in itself.”

“What was the matter with the football team this season?”

“Let’s see, how many more years have you? What, only one more! Well, well, and I can remember you when you were that high, and used to come over to my house wearing a little green dress, with big mother-of-pearl buttons. You certainly were a cute little boy, and used to call our cook ‘Sna-sna.’ And here you are, almost a senior.”

“Oh, are you 1924? I wonder if you know a fellow named—er—Mellish—Spencer Mellish? I met him at the beach last summer. I am pretty sure that he is in your class—well, no, maybe it was 1918.”

After an hour or two of this Edgar is willing to go back to college and take an extra course in Blacksmithing, Chipping and Filing, given during the Christmas vacation, rather than run the risk of getting caught again. And, whichever way you look at it, whether he spends his time getting into and out of his evening clothes, or goes crazy answering questions and defending his mode of dress, it all adds up to the same in the end—fatigue and depletion and what the doctor would call “a general run-down nervous condition.”

•     •     •     •     •

The younger you are the more frayed you get. Little Wilbur comes home from school, where he has been put to bed at 8:30 every night with the rest of the fifth form boys: and has had to brush his hair in the presence of the headmaster’s wife, and dives into what might be called a veritable maelstrom of activity. From a diet of cereal and fruit-whips, he is turned loose in the butler’s pantry among the maraschino cherries and given a free rein at the various children’s parties, where individual pound-cake Santas and brandied walnuts are followed by an afternoon at “Treasure Island,” with the result that he comes home and insists on tipping everyone in the family the black spot and breaks the cheval glass when he is denied going to the six-day bicycle race at two in the morning.

Little girls do practically the same, and, if they are over fourteen, go back to school with the added burden of an affaire de coeur contracted during the recess. In general, it takes about a month or two of good, hard schooling and overstudy to put the child back on its feet after the Christmas rest at home.

Which leads us to the conclusion that our educational system is all wrong. It is obvious that the child should be kept at home for eight months out of the year and sent to school for the vacations.

—Robert Benchley
from Love Conquers All (1922)

Christmas Afternoon

Done in the Manner,
if Not the Spirit, of Dickens

What an afternoon! Mr. Gummidge said that, in his estimation, there never had been such an afternoon since the world began, a sentiment which was heartily endorsed by Mrs. Gummidge and all the little Gummidges, not to mention the relatives who had come over from Jersey for the day.

In the first place, there was the ennui. And such ennui as it was! A heavy, overpowering ennui, such as results from a participation in eight courses of steaming, gravied food, topping off with salted nuts which the little old spinster Gummidge from Oak Hill said she never knew when to stop eating—and true enough, she didn’t—a dragging, devitalizing ennui, which left its victims strewn about the living-room in various attitudes of prostration suggestive of those of the petrified occupants in a newly unearthed Pompeian dwelling; an ennui which carried with it a retinue of yawns, snarls, and thinly veiled insults, and which ended in ruptures in the clan spirit serious enough to last throughout the glad new year.

Then there were the toys! Three and a quarter dozen toys to be divided among seven children. Surely enough, you or I might say, to satisfy the little tots. But that would be because we didn’t know the tots. In came Baby Lester Gummidge, Lillian’s boy, dragging an electric grain-elevator which happened to be the only toy in the entire collection which appealed to little Norman, five-year-old son of Luther, who lived in Rahway. In came curly-headed Effie in frantic and throaty disputation with Arthur, Jr., over the possession of an articulated zebra. In came Everett, bearing a mechanical negro which would no longer dance, owing to a previous forcible feeding by the baby of a marshmallow into its only available aperture. In came Fonlansbee, teeth buried in the hand of little Ormond, which bore a popular but battered remnant of what had once been the proud false-bosom of a hussar’s uniform. In they all came, one after another, some crying, some snapping, some pulling, some pushing—all appealing to their respective parents for aid in their intramural warfare.

And the cigar smoke! Mrs. Gummidge said that she didn’t mind the smoke from a good cigarette, but would they mind if she opened the windows for just a minute in order to clear the room of the heavy aroma of used cigars? Mr. Gummidge stoutly maintained that they were good cigars. His brother, George Gummidge, said that he, likewise, would say that they were. At which colloquial sally both the Gummidge brothers laughed testily, thereby breaking the laughter record for the afternoon.

Aunt Libbie, who lived with George, remarked from the dark corner of the room that it seemed just like Sunday to her. An amendment was offered to this statement by the cousin, who was in the insurance business, stating that it was worse than Sunday. Murmurings indicative of as hearty agreement with this sentiment as their lethargy would allow came from the other members of the family circle, causing Mr. Gummidge to suggest a walk in the air to settle their dinner.

And then arose such a chorus of protestations as has seldom been heard. It was too cloudy to walk. It was too raw. It looked like snow. It looked like rain. Luther Gummidge said that he must be starting along home soon, anyway, bringing forth the acid query from Mrs. Gummidge as to whether or not he was bored. Lillian said that she felt a cold coming on, and added that something they had had for dinner must have been undercooked. And so it went, back and forth, forth and back, up and down, and in and out, until Mr. Gummidge’s suggestion of a walk in the air was reduced to a tattered impossibility and the entire company glowed with ill-feeling.

In the meantime, we must not forget the children. No one else could. Aunt Libbie said that she didn’t think there was anything like children to make a Christmas; to which Uncle Ray, the one with the Masonic fob, said, “No, thank God!” Although Christmas is supposed to be the season of good cheer, you (or I, for that matter) couldn’t have told, from listening to the little ones, but what it was the children’s Armageddon season, when Nature had decreed that only the fittest should survive, in order that the race might be carried on by the strongest, the most predatory and those possessing the best protective coloring. Although there were constant admonitions to Fonlansbee to “Let Ormond have that whistle now; it’s his,” and to Arthur, Jr., not to be selfish, but to “give the kiddie-car to Effie; she’s smaller than you are,” the net result was always that Fonlansbee kept the whistle and Arthur, Jr., rode in permanent, albeit disputed, possession of the kiddie-car. Oh, that we mortals should set ourselves up against the inscrutable workings of Nature!

Hallo! A great deal of commotion! That was Uncle George stumbling over the electric train, which had early in the afternoon ceased to function and which had been left directly across the threshold. A great deal of crying! That was Arthur, Jr., bewailing the destruction of his already useless train, about which he had forgotten until the present moment. A great deal of recrimination! That was Arthur, Sr., and George fixing it up. And finally a great crashing! That was Baby Lester pulling over the tree on top of himself, necessitating the bringing to bear of all of Uncle Ray’s knowledge of forestry to extricate him from the wreckage.

And finally Mrs. Gummidge passed the Christmas candy around. Mr. Gummidge afterward admitted that this was a tactical error on the part of his spouse. I no more believe that Mrs. Gummidge thought they wanted that Christmas candy than I believe that she thought they wanted the cold turkey which she later suggested. My opinion is that she wanted to drive them home. At any rate, that is what she succeeded in doing. Such cries as there were of “Ugh! Don’t let me see another thing to eat!” and “Take it away!” Then came hurried scramblings in the coat-closet for over-shoes. There were the rasping sounds made by cross parents when putting wraps on children. There were insincere exhortations to “come and see us soon” and to “get together for lunch sometime.” And, finally, there were slammings of doors and the silence of utter exhaustion, while Mrs. Gummidge went about picking up stray sheets of wrapping paper.

And, as Tiny Tim might say in speaking of Christmas afternoon as an institution, “God help us, every one.”

—Robert Benchley
from Of All Things (1921)

A Christmas Insurrection

In the hush of a shivery Christmastide dawn

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

Three small frozen figures hung stiff and forlorn

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

Three dim ghostly forms in the glimmering gray

Locked up in dark cold storage quarters were they

Awaiting the coming of glad Christmas day

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

Suspended each one from a hickory twig

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

A turkey, a goose, and a little fat pig

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

With chestnuts the turkey was garnished and stuffed

With onions and sage was the goose-carcass puffed,

While piggy was spiced, and his neck was beruffed

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

Three spirits regretful were hovering near

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“Look!” gobbled the turkey’s, “what tragedy’s here!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“For this did they tempt me with fattening food,

For this did I bring up my beautiful brood,

I always thought farmers uncommonly rude!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

The goose spirit trembled, then hissingly said

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“Most men care for nothing except to be fed!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“What horror is this, filled with onions and sage

To be served on a platter at my tender age!

’Tis enough any well-disposed fowl to enrage!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

The phantom pig grunted, “Do please look at that!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“Oh! why did I grow up so rosy and fat!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“They put in my mouth a sweet, juicy corncob

Just when of sensations my palate they rob,

Do you wonder such sights make a spirit-pig sob!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

Conferring, the spirits resolved on a plan

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

By which to wreak vengeance on merciless man

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

“We’ll each disagree with the human inside,

We’ll cause indigestion and damage his pride,

And the pains of this Christmas we’ll spread far and wide!”

Sing hey! sing ho! heigho!

—Anne Field
from Christmas (1907)
ed. Robert Haven Schauffler

Holiday Hospitality

We used to know a fellow who became a bit of a sadist around holiday time. He did not marry until he was in his late thirties and his bachelor days had been quite gay and carefree, or anyway, gay. He married a nice girl who was a fine housekeeper and an excellent cook and made a nice home for him, but we suspect that he had periods of envy of his former bachelor pals.

When a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas was approaching he would catch one of these pals in an unguarded moment and invite the poor guy to dinner in his home. He would first buy the prospect a few drinks to soften him up and would then condole with him on the utter loneliness of the bachelor state at this festive period of year, painting such a dreary picture that the victim would soon lapse into tears of sympathy for himself, though given time for sober reflection he would realize that he was not lonely at all.

Our villain would expatiate on the skill of his wife, Myra, in wrestling a turkey and would throw in a few little sketches of the joys of drawing up to a well-laden table surrounded by beaming kissers and would eventually draw from his tearful quarry a remark that he would love that sort of thing himself. Then our sinister schemer would plunge home the invitation to dinner, and it was an even money bet that his prey would accept unless he had been smartened up by previous experience.

Now that was all apparently innocent enough—an invitation to dinner. But the menace in this tale would then mention in an offhand manner the hour, which he always made around 2 o’clock p.m., a circumstance that for years puzzled his wife, Myra, who did not realize his sadistic tendency and would just as soon have had the dinner at the more civilized hour of 8 p.m. But her cruel husband convinced her that he liked the midday feast because it reminded him of his boyhood days.

Now, of course, he knew very well that his guest would go out with the boys (and maybe the girls) and get himself good and loaded the night before the fateful day, in accordance with the time-honored holiday custom of bachelors, and probably sleep until noon, and get up with sad stomach and the most awful taste in his mouth. To guard against any late cancellations on the grounds of sudden calls out of the city or sickness or deaths in the family, the foul host would keep calling up his man and tell him how hard Myra was working on the dinner and how her heart would be broken if the guy failed to show up.

So, of course, the unfortunate soul would go to the dinner regardless of his physical suffering, and the first thing the host would do, fiend in human form that he was, would be to plant one of the kids, preferably a baby, on the bloke’s lap, and the baby would immediately start to cry, thus increasing the guest’s already splitting headache. However, this was just a minor circumstance, to what happened to the gee when the dinner was put on the table in a dining room that the host purposely overheated.

The poor bachelor’s plate would be piled high with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and turnips, cranberry sauce, etc., and if he managed to struggle through a bit of it, the inhuman monster who had invited him there would keep slapping on more provisions, saying the good wife would feel perfectly dreadful if he did not eat every smitch. And all this, you understand, would be happening to a guy with a horrible hangover at around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, when just thinking of a glass of orange juice made him gag, while meantime the host would be excusing himself every few minutes and going into an adjoining room and laughing himself silly over the guest’s agony.

We have not seen that host in some time, but we are told that he was found one Christmas Eve in an alleyway with both legs broken, and while we do not vouch for the story, we have heard that he was set upon by several of his victims of past years, aided and abetted by a bachelor who had promised to be at the fellow’s house for dinner the following day and was looking for an out.

—Damon Runyon
from Short Takes (1946)

Alias Santa Claus

When I am a young squirt nutting around my old home town out West, this Christmas business is considered quite a thing, and people make it a point to go about wishing one another a very Merry Christmas and drinking hot Tom and Jerry.

Of course, in nine cases out of ten, what people in my home town really wish other people is a broken leg, but it does not cost anybody a dime to go about saying Merry Christmas, and a guy who does not do it is considered a sourball, especially if he is full of hot Tom and Jerrys.

This Tom and Jerry is quite a drink in those days, and at Christmas time every joint always has a big bowl of it out on the bar, where it will be handy for the citizens to drink. Everybody in my home town is fond of Tom and Jerrys, as they are considered very nourishing, but nobody is as fond of them as my Grandpap Mugg, who uses them as chasers for his liquor.

Furthermore, nobody in my home town is any greater hand for Christmas than my Grandpap Mugg. He is a little old pappy guy with a goatee, and he has a tough time of it in the early days, what with fighting the Indians, and getting himself married up two or three times hand running, but he just naturally loves to get up early on Christmas Day and go about wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and drinking his hot Tom and Jerrys as chasers.

The way my Grandpap Mugg generally does is to start in at the first joint he comes to on Santa Fe Avenue and work on down the street. As there is a joint nearly every other door on Santa Fe Avenue in those days, it is a long, hard trip for an old pappy guy, but my Grandpap Mugg had wonderful endurance, and he misses very few people with his Merry Christmases in my home town on Christmas Day.

Well, this Christmas I am talking about, the First Methodist Church, South, gets up a big Christmas celebration for the kids in my home town. They are going to have a big Christmas tree, and they give it out that Santa Claus himself is going to drop in with presents for one and all, if they belong to the Sunday school. Naturally, all the kids in my home town are much smoked up, especially about the presents.

Things are going along great, and the Sunday school is getting a nice play, but the night before Christmas the pastor of the First Methodist Church comes around to our joint pulling a long puss, which is a way of saying he has a sad face, and he says the guy who is to act as Santa Claus comes down suddenly with pneumonia, or some such, and there is danger of the celebration being a plumb bust.

He wants to know will my Grandpap Mugg act as Santa Claus, and my Grandpap Mugg not only says he will, but furthermore he is much pleasured up by the idea, although my old man weighs in with a strong knock for the proposition as soon as he hears about it. He says it is all a lot of dam foolishness, but all the dames around the joint say they think it will be lovely, so the pastor leaves the Santa Claus rig, with a red suit of clothes and false whiskers, and all such as that, with my Grandpap Mugg and tells him he can practice putting it on.

My Grandpap Mugg is so steamed up that he spends the rest of the night practicing, and bright and early the next morning he ducks out of the joint with the rig in a sack under his arm without saying a word to anybody. He is not to appear as Santa Claus at the church until that night, but it seems my Grandpap Mugg wants to show the outfit to the lads around town.

Well, the next anybody hears of my Grandpap Mugg, it is along toward noon of Christmas Day, and it seems he is drinking many hot Tom and Jerrys as chasers and is putting on the clothes and whiskers to show the lads just how he will look as Santa Claus.

He puts them on in the back room of one joint, and then after he has a few hot Tom and Jerrys at the bar as chasers, and all the folks say he looks great, he takes them off and goes to another joint. After he changes clothes about fifteen times, my Grandpap Mugg decides that it is too much bother to be putting on and taking off the rig, so he just leaves it on, and is going from one joint to another in the make-up.

Naturally, when some kids see old Santa Claus himself walking down the street in broad daylight, they take to following him with cries of what you might call childish glee, and all such as that. It causes some talk among them when Santa goes into a saloon, of course, but they figure maybe he is going to leave a jumping jack or a train of cars for the saloonkeeper and they wait outside the door with great patience until Santa comes out. Then they follow him again.

By and by, several thousand kids are trailing my Grandpap Mugg whenever he stirs hand or foot out of a joint, and there is much excitement, and among grown folks as well, because very few of them ever see Santa Claus rambling in and out of joints before, and drinking hot Tom and Jerrys, especially as chasers.

Of course, my Grandpap Mugg is much pleasured up about the kids following him, because he is always very fond of children, but finally it occurs to him that a regular Santa Claus ought to have some presents to give them. There are no stores open on Christmas Day in my home town, so my Grandpap Mugg buys a lot of half-pint flasks of whiskey as he goes along, and starts distributing them among what you might call the little toddlers who are following him.

Afterwards this makes talk among the parents in my home town, what with some of the toddlers taking a swig or two out of the flasks. but my Grandpap Mugg never pays much attention to criticism in this respect. He always says the parents are only sore because he does not give the kids quarts.

Well, anyway, for an hour or so there is a great time, but finally my Grandpap Mugg begins getting a little fretful, which is always the way be does after a few dozen hot Tom and Jerrys as chasers. My Grandpap Mugg is an old pappy guy and can stand children only just so long. By and by the kids who are following him get on his nerves, because they are so thick they keep him from getting into the joints as fast as he likes, so he takes to shoving them out of the way, and to clouting them if they do not move quick enough.

Well, of course kids do not expect to got clouted by Santa Claus, who is supposed to be a kind old man with a smile for one and all, and pretty soon half of them are crying, and the other half are slinging alley apples, which is a way of saying rocks, at my Grandpap Mugg, for nobody can clout little children in my old home town in those days, and not get slung at.

So my Grandpap Mugg goes into the Opera House bar, and after he has a couple more hot Tom and Jerrys for chasers, he gets himself a billiard cue out of the rack in the back room and busts it across his knee, and then he takes the butt end and starts out after the kids.

Well, no one knows what will happen if my Aunt Margaret does not come along about this time and corral my Grandpap Mugg, but the chances are if he is let alone there will be a great many crippled little children in my old home town, for my Grandpap Mugg is considered very handy with the butt end of a billiard cue.

For many years afterwards a lot of people are very sore at my Grandpap Mugg, because it seems they have to start in raising a new generation of children to believe in Santa Claus. There is little or no Christmas celebrating in my old home town until the now crop comes along, because the kids who see my Grandpap Mugg that day never have any other notion of Santa Claus than that of an old pappy guy chasing them with a big club, and naturally they do not want to have much truck with such a person.

But the toughest part of the whole thing is they will not let my Grandpap Mugg act as Santa Claus at the church affair, after all, and that almost breaks the poor old guy’s heart.

—Damon Runyon
from The Washingon Times, 18 Dec 1921

Grandpap and the Yuletide

Whenever it comes on toward Christmas I always get to thinking how much my Grandpap loves this season of the year.

He is a kindly old pappy guy. and he likes to see everybody happy during the merry Yuletide, as my Aunt Margaret calls it, although my Grandpap says it ls a hundred-to-one shot she does not know what Yuletide means, and is only chucking a swell when she calls it such.

Anyway a couple of weeks before Christmas my Grandpap is always busier than a bird dog, because in those days Christmas time was always a fairly heavy drinking time back in my old home town, and my Grandpap naturally has to help out in the drinking, as do all good citizens, so that the bartenders and saloon keepers will have an extra merry Christmas.

In fact, next to Fourth of July week, Decoration Day, and just before Thanksgiving, Christmas is one of our very busiest drinking seasons. In fact, some people claim it is the heaviest, although they have no statistics to prove it, as Marshall Dillon and the other authorities who might have these statistics are busy themselves helping out in the drinking and have no time for figures.

Well, anyway, besides assisting in the drinking, my Grandpap has to do other shopping, because he has many presents to buy for his family and others, including old Mrs. Peabody the widow woman who lives up the Arkansaw river here a piece.

Of course, nobody is supposed to know my Grandpap is buying any presents for Mrs. Peabody, as it is a dead secret, but everybody in town knows it, because this is after one of the Grandmaws die, and Grandpap is out to make Mrs. Peabody another one of my Grandmaws.

My Aunt Margaret and everybody in our family is dead against the proposition, saying it is a lot of foolishness for an old pappy guy like my Grandpap to be running around with such notions in his head, but nobody ever yet figures a way to keep my Grandpap from getting married up from time to time, not even himself.

Well, anyway, this business with Mrs. Peabody is going on for some years, and she is not a bad looking old dame, at that, and has plenty of dough, so I do not see that my Grandpap is such a chump as the women folks let on, especially as we can always use dough around our joint.

But it seems that my Grandpap has one objection to Mrs. Peabody, and this is a big dog she has around her place, which is always taking a snatch at my Grandpap’s leg. Naturally my Grandpap is not as spry as he used to be, and he does not care for this snatching proposition a little bit.

So he is always figuring to get rid of this dog, but of course he does not let Mrs. Peabody know it, because it is no cinch she does not think more of the dog than she does of my Grandpap.

Anyway, Christmas is here, and my Grandpap hauls off and buys Mrs. Peabody a nice present for herself in Biggs’ department store. What my Grandpap buys her is a swell silk muffler, which she can wear around her neck when she goes out. which is very seldom.

Then while he is out shopping, my Grandpap thinks about Mrs. Peabody’s dog, and so he buys the dog a present, too. He buys the dog a nice pound of meat, which is certainly very thoughtful for my Grandpap, because it is as good meat as you can find in my old home town. Then my Grandpap fixes the meat up nice with some Rough on Rats, because the idea is to knock the dog off so it will not snatch him any more.

Well, my Grandpap puts the muffler in one pocket, and the package of meat in the other, and then he does a little more shopping around the saloons, wishing one and all many happy returns of the day.

Finally he goes out to Mrs. Peabody’s house to leave his presents, but by this time he forgets which package is which, so he tosses the muffler to the dog without bothering to unwrap it, and leaves the package with the pound of meat for Mrs. Peabody, and comes on home.

When Mrs. Peabody unwraps her package and finds it full of beefsteak, she naturally thinks it is a funny Christmas present, and the chances are she is pretty sore. But Mrs. Peabody is no waster, which is one reason why my Grandpap is so strong for her, so she just naturally cooks old Mister Meat for herself and sets down and eats it.

Well, it is not long before Doc. Butler is on the hop for Mrs. Peabody, and how he yanks her back to life is a miracle, and costs her plenty. At soon as she can talk there is the dickens to pay, because she swears my Grandpap tries to poison her, which is great foolishness, and he is not dumb enough to poison her before he marries her.

My Grandpap goes out to apologize, and the next anybody sees of him Mrs. Peabody’s dog, with a piece of silk muffler around his neck, is running him bowlegged.

Of course it is all off between my Grandpap and Mrs. Peabody, and the Yuletide is not as merry for him as somewhat. It is a very tough break, to be sure, but my Grandpap always says the toughest break he gets is that Mrs. Peabody is so hungry she eats all the meat and does not leave any for the dog.

—Damon Runyon
from The Washingon Times, 24 Dec 1922

Dancing Dan’s Christmas

Now one time it comes on Christmas, and in fact it is the evening before Christmas, and I am on Good Time Charley Bernstein’s little speakeasy on West Forty-seventh Street, wishing Charley a Merry Christmas and having a few hot Tom and Jerrys with him.

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

But anybody will tell you that there is nothing that brings out the true holiday spirit like hot Tom and Jerry, and I hear that since Tom and Jerry goes out of style in the United States, the holiday spirit is never quite the same.

The reason hot Tom and Jerry goes out of style is because it is necessary to use rum and one thing and another in making Tom and Jerry, and naturally when rum becomes illegal in this country Tom and Jerry is also against the law, because rum is something that is very hard to get around town these days.

For a while some people try making Tom and Jerry without putting rum in it, but somehow it never has the same old holiday spirit, so nearly everybody finally gives up in disgust, and this is not surprising, as making Tom and Jerry is by no means child’s play. In fact, it takes quite an expert to make good Tom and Jerry, and in the days when it is not illegal a good hot Tom and Jerry maker commands good wages and many friends.

Now of course Good Time Charley and I are not using rum in the Tom and Jerry we are making, as we do not wish to do anything illegal. What we are using is rye whiskey that Good Time Charley gets on a doctor’s prescription from a drug store, as we are personally drinking this hot Tom and Jerry and naturally we are not foolish enough to use any of Good Time Charley’s own rye in it.

The prescription for the rye whiskey comes from old Doc Moggs, who prescribes it for Good Time Charley’s rheumatism in case Charley happens to get rheumatism, as Doc Moggs says there is nothing better for rheumatism than rye whiskey, especially if it is made up in a hot Tom and Jerry. In fact, old Doc Moggs comes around and has a few seidels of hot Tom and Jerry with us for his own rheumatism.

He comes around during the afternoon, for Good Time Charley and I start making this Tom and Jerry early in the day, so as to be sure to have enough to last us over Christmas, and it is now along towards six o’clock, and our holiday spirit is practically one hundred per cent.

Well, as Good Time Charley and I are expressing our holiday sentiments to each other over our hot Tom and Jerry, and I am trying to think up the poem about the night before Christmas and all through the house, which I know will interest Charley no little, all of a sudden there is a big knock at the front door, and when Charley opens the door, who comes in carrying a large package under one arm but a guy by the name of Dancing Dan.

This Dancing Dan is a good-looking young guy, who always seems well-dressed, and he is called by the name of Dancing Dan because he is a great hand for dancing around and about with dolls in night clubs, and other spots where there is any dancing. In fact, Dan never seems to be doing anything else, although I hear rumors that when he is not dancing he is carrying on in a most illegal manner at one thing and another. But of course you can always hear rumors in this town about anybody, and personally I am rather fond of Dancing Dan as he always seems to be getting a great belt out of life.

Anybody in town will tell you that Dancing Dan is a guy with no Barnaby whatever in him, and in fact he has about as much gizzard as anybody around, although I wish to say I always question his judgment in dancing so much with Miss Muriel O’Neill, who works in the Half Moon night club. And the reason I question his judgment in this respect is because everybody knows that Miss Muriel O’Neill is a doll who is very well thought of by Heine Schmitz, and Heine Schmitz is not such a guy as will take kindly to anybody dancing more than once and a half with a doll that he thinks well of.

This Heine Schmitz is a very influential citizen of Harlem, where he has large interests in beer, and other business enterprises, and it is by no means violating any confidence to tell you that Heine Schmitz will just as soon blow your brains out as look at you. In fact, I hear, sooner. Anyway, he is not a guy to monkey with and many citizens take the trouble to advise Dancing Dan that he is not only away out of line in dancing with Miss Muriel O’Neill, but that he is knocking his own price down to where he is no price at all.

But Dancing Dan only laughs ha-ha, and goes on dancing with Miss Muriel O’Neill anytime he gets the chance, and Good Time Charley says he does not blame him, at that, as Miss Muriel O’Neill is so beautiful that he will be dancing with her himself no matter what, if he is five years younger and can get a Roscoe out as fast as in the days when he runs with Paddy the Link and other fast guys.

Well, anyway, as Dancing Dan comes in, he weighs up the joint in one quick peek, and then he tosses the package he is carrying into a corner where it goes plunk, as if there is something very heavy in it, and then he steps up to the bar alongside of Charley and me and wishes to know what we are drinking.

Naturally we start boosting hot Tom and Jerry to Dancing Dan, and he says he will take a crack at it with us, and after one crack, Dancing Dan says he will have another crack, and Merry Christmas to us with it, and the first thing anybody knows it is a couple of hours later and we still are still having cracks at the hot Tom and Jerry with Dancing Dan, and Dan says he never drinks anything so soothing in his life. In fact, Dancing Dan says he will recommend Tom and Jerry to everybody he knows, only he does not know anybody good enough for Tom and Jerry, except maybe Miss Muriel O’Neill, and she does not drink anything with drugstore rye in it.

Well, several times while we are drinking this Tom and Jerry, customers come to the door of Good Time Charley’s little speakeasy and knock, but by now Charley is commencing to be afraid they will wish Tom and Jerry, too, and he does not feel we will have enough for ourselves, so he hangs out a sign which says “Closed on Account of Christmas,” and the only one he will let in is a guy by the name of Ooky, who is nothing but an old rumdum, and who is going around all week dressed like Santa Claus and carrying a sign advertising Moe Lewinsky’s clothing joint around on Sixth Avenue.

This Ooky is still wearing his Santa Claus outfit when Charley lets him in, and the reason Charley permits such a character as Ooky in his joint is because Ooky does the porter work for Charley when he is not Santa Claus for Moe Lewinsky, such as sweeping out, and washing the glasses, and one thing and another.

Well, it is about nine-thirty when Ooky comes in, and his puppies are aching, and he is all petered out generally from walking up and down and here and there with his sign, for any time a guy is Santa Claus for Moe Lewinsky he must earn his dough. In fact, Ooky is so fatigued, and his puppies hurt him so much that Dancing Dan and Good Time Charley and I all feel very sorry for him, and invite him to have a few mugs of hot Tom and Jerry with us, and wish him plenty of Merry Christmas.

But old Ooky is not accustomed to Tom and Jerry and after about the fifth mug he folds up in a chair, and goes right to sleep on us. He is wearing a pretty good Santa Claus make-up, what with a nice red suit trimmed with white cotton, and a wig, and false nose, and long white whiskers, and a big sack stuffed with excelsior on his back, and if I do not know Santa Claus is not apt to be such a guy as will snore loud enough to rattle the windows, I will think Ooky is Santa Claus sure enough.

Well, we forget Ooky and let him sleep, and go on with our hot Tom and Jerry, and in the meantime we try to think up a few songs appropriate to Christmas, and Dancing Dan finally renders “My Dad’s Dinner Pail” in a nice baritone and very loud, while I do first rate with “Will You Love Me in December—As You Do in May?” But personally I always think Good Time Charley Bernstein is a little out of line trying to sing a hymn in Jewish on such an occasion, and it causes words between us.

While we are singing many customers come to the door and knock, and then read Charley’s sign, and this seems to cause some unrest among them, and some of them stand outside saying it is a great outrage, until Charley sticks his noggin out the door and threatens to bust somebody’s beezer if they do not go about their business and stop disturbing peaceful citizens.

Naturally the customers go away, as they do not wish their beezers busted, and Dancing Dan and Charley and I continue drinking our hot Tom and Jerry, and with each Tom and Jerry we are wishing one another a very Merry Christmas, and sometimes a very Happy New Year, although of course this does not go for Good Time Charley as yet, because Charley has his New Year separate from Dancing Dan and me.

By and by we take to waking Ooky up in his Santa Claus outfit and offering him more hot Tom and Jerry, and wishing him Merry Christmas, but Ooky only gets sore and calls us names, so we can see he does not have the right holiday spirit in him, and let him alone until along about midnight when Dancing Dan wishes to see how he looks as Santa Claus.

So Good Time Charley and I help Dancing Dan pull off Ooky’s outfit and put it on Dan, and this is easy as Ooky only has this Santa Claus outfit on over his ordinary clothes, and he does not even wake up when we are undressing him of the Santa Claus uniform.

Well, I wish to say I see many a Santa Claus in my time, but I never see a better-looking Santa Claus than Dancing Dan, especially after he gets the wig and white whiskers fixed just right, and we put a sofa pillow that Good Time Charley happens to have around the joint for the cat to sleep on down his pants to give Dancing Dan a nice fat stomach such as Santa Claus is bound to have.

“Well,” Charley finally says, “it is a great pity we do not know where there are some stockings hung up somewhere, because then,” he says, “you can go around and stuff things in these stockings, as I always hear this is the main idea of a Santa Claus. But,” Charley says, “I do not suppose anybody in this section has any stockings hung up, or if they have,” he says “the chances are they are so full of holes they will not hold anything. Anyway,” Charley says, “even if there are any stockings hung up we do not have anything to stuff in them, although personally,” he says, “I will gladly donate a few pints of Scotch.”

Well, I am pointing out that we have no reindeer and that a Santa Claus is bound to look like a terrible sap if he goes around without any reindeer, but Charley’s remarks seem to give Dancing Dan an idea, for all of a sudden he speaks as follows:

“Why,” Dancing Dan says, “I know where a stocking is hung up. It is hung up at Miss Muriel O’Neill’s flat over here on West Forty-ninth Street. This stocking is hung up by nobody but a party by the name of Gammer O’Neill, who is Miss Muriel O’Neill’s grandmamma,” Dancing Dan says. “Gammer O’Neill is going on ninety-odd,” he says, “and Miss Muriel O’Neill told me she cannot hold out much longer, what with one thing and another, including being a little childish in spots.

“Now,” Dancing Dan says, “I remember Miss Muriel O’Neill is telling me just the other night how Gammer O’Neill hangs up her stocking on Christmas Eve all her life, and,” he says, “I judge from what Miss Muriel O’Neill says that the old doll always believes Santa Claus will come along one Christmas and fill the stocking full of beautiful gifts. But,” Dancing Dan says, “Miss Muriel O’Neill tells me Santa Claus never does this, though Miss Muriel O’Neill personally always takes a few gifts home and puts them into the stocking to make Gammer O’Neill feel better.

“But, of course,” Dancing Dan says, “these gifts are nothing much because Miss Muriel O’Neill is very poor, and proud, and also good, and will not take a dime off of anybody and I can lick the guy who says she will.

“Now,” Dancing Dan goes on, “it seems that while Gammer O’Neill is very happy to get whatever she finds in her stocking on Christmas morning, she does not understand why Santa Claus is not more liberal, and,” he says, “Miss Muriel O’Neill is saying to me that she only wishes she can give Gammer O’Neill one real big Christmas before the old doll puts her checks back in the rack.

“So,” Dancing Dan states, “here is a job for us. Miss Muriel O’Neill and her grandmamma live all alone in this flat over on West Forty-ninth Street, and,” he says, “at such an hour as this Miss Muriel O’Neill is bound to be working, and the chances are Gammer O’Neill is sound asleep, and we will just hop over there and Santa Claus will fill up her stocking with beautiful gifts.

“Well,” I say, “I do not see where we are going to get any beautiful gifts at this time of night, what with all the stores being closed, unless we dash into an all-night drug store and buy a few bottles of perfume and a bum toilet set as guys always do when they forget about their ever-loving wives until after store hours on Christmas Eve,” but Dancing Dan says never mind about this, but let us have a few more Tom and Jerrys first.

So we have a few more Tom and Jerrys and then Dancing Dan picks up the package he heaves into the corner, and dumps most of the excelsior out of Ooky’s Santa Claus sack, and puts the bundle in, and Good Time Charley turns out all the lights, but one, and leaves a bottle of Scotch on the table in front of Ooky for a Christmas gift, and away we go.

Personally, I regret very much leaving the hot Tom and Jerry, but then I’m also very enthusiastic about going along to help Dancing Dan play Santa Claus, while Good Time Charley is practically overjoyed, as it is the first time in his life Charley is ever mixed up in so much holiday spirit.

As we go up Broadway, headed for Forty-ninth Street, Charley and I see many citizens we know and give them a large hello, and wish them Merry Christmas, and some of these citizens shake hands with Santa Claus, not knowing he is nobody but Dancing Dan, although later I understand there’s some gossip among these citizens because they claim a Santa Claus with such a breath on him as our Santa Claus has is a little out of line.

And once we are somewhat embarrassed when a lot of little kids going home with their parents from a late Christmas party somewhere gather about Santa Claus with shouts of childish glee, and some of them wish to climb up Santa Claus’ legs. Naturally, Santa Claus gets a little peevish, and calls them a few names, and one of the parents comes up and wishes to know what is the idea of Santa Claus using such language, and Santa Claus takes a punch at the parent, all of which is no doubt astonishing to the little kids who have an idea of Santa Claus as a very kindly old guy.

Well, finally we arrive in front of the place where Dancing Dan says Miss Muriel O’Neill and her grandmamma live, and it is nothing but a tenement house not far back off Madison Square Garden, and furthermore it is a walk-up, and at this time there are no lights burning in the joint except a gas jet in the main hall, and by the light of this jet we look at the names on the letter boxes, such as you always find in the hall of these joints, and we see that Miss Muriel O’Neill and her grandmamma live on the fifth floor.

This is the top floor, and personally I do not like the idea of walking up five flights of stairs, and I am willing to let Dancing Dan and Good Time Charley go, but Dancing Dan insists we must all go, and finally I agree with him because Charley is commencing to argue that the right way for us to do is to get on the roof and let Santa Claus go down a chimney, and is making so much noise I am afraid he will wake somebody up.

So up the stairs we climb and finally we come to a door on the top floor that has a little card in a slot that says O’Neill, so we know we reach our destination. Dancing Dan first tries the knob, and right away the door opens, and we are in a little two- or three-room flat, with not much furniture in it, and what furniture there is, is very poor. One single gas jet is burning near a bed in a room just off the one the door opens into, and by this light we see a very old doll is sleeping on the bed, so we judge this is nobody but Gammer O’Neill.

On her face is a large smile, as if she is dreaming of something very pleasant. On a chair at the head of the bed is hung a long black stocking, and it seems to be such a stocking as is often patched and mended, so I can see that what Miss Muriel O’Neill tells Dancing Dan about her grandmamma hanging up her stocking is really true, although up to this time I have my doubts. Finally Dancing Dan unslings the sack on his back, and takes out his package, and unties this package, and all of a sudden out pops a raft of big diamond bracelets, and diamond rings, and diamond brooches, and diamond necklaces, and I do not know what else in the way of diamonds, and Dancing Dan and I begin stuffing these diamonds into the stocking and Good Time Charley pitches in and helps us. There are enough diamonds to fill the stocking to the muzzle, and it is no small stocking, at that, and I judge that Gammer O’Neill has a pretty fair set of bunting sticks when she is young. In fact, there are so many diamonds that we have enough left over to make a nice little pile on the chair after we fill the stocking plumb up, leaving a nice diamond-studded vanity case sticking out the top where we figure it will hit Gammer O’Neill’s eye when she wakes up. And it is not until I get out in the fresh air again that all of a sudden I remember seeing large headlines in the afternoon papers about a five-hundred-G’s stickup in the afternoon of one of the biggest diamond merchants on Maiden Lane while he is sitting in his office, and I also recall once hearing rumors that Dancing Dan is one of the best lone-hand git-’em-up guys in the world. Naturally, I commence to wonder if I am in the proper company when I am with Dancing Dan, even if he is Santa Claus. So I leave him on the next corner arguing with Good Time Charley about whether they ought to go and find some more presents somewhere, and look for other stockings to stuff, and I hasten on home and go to bed. The next day I find I have such a noggin that I do not care to stir around, and in fact I do not stir around much for a couple of weeks. Then one night I drop around to Good Time Charley’s little speakeasy, and ask Charley what is doing.

“Well,” Charley says, “many things are doing, and personally,” he says, “I’m greatly surprised I do not see you at Gammer O’Neill’s wake. You know Gammer O’Neill leaves this wicked old world a couple of days after Christmas,” Good Time Charley says, “and,” he says, “Miss Muriel O’Neill states that Doc Moggs claims it is at least a day after she is entitled to go, but she is sustained,” Charley says, “by great happiness in finding her stocking filled with beautiful gifts on Christmas morning.

“According to Miss Muriel O’Neill,” Charley says, “Gammer O’Neill dies practically convinced that there is a Santa Claus, although of course,” he says, “Miss Muriel O’Neill does not tell her the real owner of the gifts, an all-right guy by the name of Shapiro, leaves the gifts with her after Miss Muriel O’Neill notifies him of finding of same.

“It seems,” Charley says, “this Shapiro is a tender-hearted guy, who is willing to help keep Gammer O’Neill with us a little longer when Doc Moggs says leaving the gifts with her will do it.

“So,” Charley says, “everything is quite all right, as the coppers cannot figure anything except that maybe the rascal who takes the gifts from Shapiro gets conscience-stricken, and leaves them the first place he can, and Miss Muriel O’Neill receives a ten-G’s reward for finding the gifts and returning them. And,” Charley says, “I hear Dancing Dan is in San Francisco and is figuring on reforming and becoming a dancing teacher, so he can marry Miss Muriel O’Neill, and of course,” he says, “we all hope and trust she never learns any details of Dancing Dan’s career.”

Well, it is Christmas Eve a year later that I run into a guy by the name of Shotgun Sam, who is mobbed up with Heine Schmitz in Harlem, and who is a very, very obnoxious character indeed.

“Well, well, well,” Shotgun says, “the last time I see you is another Christmas like this, and you are coming out of Good Time Charley’s joint, and,” he says, “you certainly have your pots on.”

“Well, Shotgun,” I says, “I am sorry you get such a wrong impression of me, but the truth is,” I say, “on the occasion you speak of, I am suffering from a dizzy feeling in my head.”

“It is all right with me,” Shotgun says. “I have a tip this guy Dancing Dan is in Good Time Charley’s the night I see you, and Mockie Morgan, and Gunnerjack and me are casing the joint, because,” he says, “Heine Schmitz is all sored up at Dan over some doll, although of course,” Shotgun says, “it is all right now, as Heine has another doll.

“Anyway,” he says, “we never get to see Dancing Dan. We watch the joint from six-thirty in the evening until daylight Christmas morning, and nobody goes in all night but old Ooky the Santa Claus guy in his Santa Claus make-up, and,” Shotgun says, “nobody comes out except you and Good Time Charley and Ooky.

“Well,” Shotgun says, “it is a great break for Dancing Dan he never goes in or comes out of Good Time Charley’s, at that, because,” he says, “we are waiting for him on the second-floor front of the building across the way with some nice little sawed-offs, and are under orders from Heine not to miss.”

“Well, Shotgun,” I say, “Merry Christmas.”

“Well, all right,” Shotgun says, “Merry Christmas.”

—Damon Runyon
from Collier’s magazine, 31 Dec 1931

The Night After Christmas

’Twas the night after Christmas in Santa-Claus land

And to rest from his labors St. Nicholas planned.

The reindeer were turned out to pasture and all

The ten thousand assistants discharged till the fall.

The furry great-coat was laid safely away

With the boots and the cap with its tassel so gay,

And toasting his toes by a merry wood fire,

What more could a weary old Santa desire?

So he puffed at his pipe and remarked to his wife,

“This amply makes up for my strenuous life!

From climbing down chimneys my legs fairly ache,

But it’s well worth the while for the dear children’s sake.

I’d bruise every bone in my body to see

The darlings’ delight in a gift-laden tree!”

Just then came a sound like a telephone bell—

Though why they should have such a thing I can’t tell—

St. Nick gave a snort and exclaimed in a rage,

“Bad luck to inventions of this modern age!”

He grabbed the receiver—his face wore a frown

As he roared in the mouthpiece, “I will not come down

To exchange any toys like an up-to-date store,

Ring off, I’ll not listen to anything more!”

Then he settled himself by the comforting blaze

And waxed reminiscent of halcyon days

When children were happy with simplest of toys:

A doll for the girls and a drum for the boys—

But again came that noisy disturber of peace

The telephone bell—would the sound never cease?

“Run and answer it, wife, all my patience has fled,

If they keep this thing up I shall wish I were dead!

I have worked night and day the best part of a year

To supply all the children, and what do I hear—

A boy who declares he received roller-skates

When he wanted a gun—and a cross girl who states

That she asked for a new Victor talking machine

And I brought her a sled, so she thinks I am mean!’”

Poor St. Nicholas looked just the picture of woe,

He needed some auto-suggestion, you know,

To make him think things were all coming out right,

For he didn’t get one wink of slumber that night!

The telephone wire was kept sizzling hot

By children disgusted with presents they’d got,

And when the bright sun showed its face in the sky

The Santa-Claus family were ready to cry!

Just then something happened—a way of escape,

Though it came in the funniest possible shape—

An aeronaut, sorely in need of a meal,

Descended for breakfast—it seemed quite ideal!

For the end of it was, he invited his host

Out to try the balloon, of whose speed he could boast.

St. Nick, who was nothing if not a good sport,

Was delighted to go, and as quick as a thought

Climbed into the car for a flight in the air—

“No telephone bells can disturb me up there!

And, wife, if it suits me I’ll count it no crime

To stay up till ready for next Christmas time!”

Thus saying—he sailed in the giant balloon,

And I fear that he will not return very soon.

Now, when you ask “Central” for Santa-Claus land

She’ll say, “discontinued”—and you’ll understand.

—Anne Field
from Christmas (1907)
ed. Robert Haven Schauffler

About this eBook

The Curmudgeon’s
Own Christmas Book

A COLLECTION
OF POEMS, STORIES, AND ESSAYS
TO SATISFY YOUR INNER GRINCH

An assortment of humorous writings for the cynical and hard-of-heart. Satires, spoofs, and just-plain-silliness will elicit grins, chuckles, and more than a few nods of recognition. And, just maybe, a little holiday spirit might slip in and take you by surprise.

This ebook was compiled and created by ECM for MobileRead.com, December 2018, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The contents of this book were first published 1907 ~ 1946.

The text of this book is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+70” or less.

Click here for editing notes.

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EDITING NOTES

>>TOC     >>ABOUT

This is my own compilation. Texts were obtained from archive.org, hathitrust.org, wikisource.org, gutenberg.org, fadedpage.com.

OCR and printer’s errors were silently corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted.

Story titles are cross-linked to table of contents.

Embedded font “TypographerGotisch” by Dieter Steffman used for initial caps.

“Scrooge” cover element from an Arthur Rackham illustration for Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, published 1915.

Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.