Christmas 2010 Stories, Poems, and Jokes
Created | Updated Dec 23, 2010
"But Mr. Pendergast, the ladies at Golden Sunset Retirement Home loved me last year, as did the Congregation of Diminutive Saints!"
"The qualities that make you our best Easter Bunny work against you as Santa, which our customers expect to be of at least average height and have a low-pitched voice; I would offer you some gigs
as elves, but I know you have six children to support, and need the higher pay that Santas receive. Anyway, the Golden Sunset People are using an animatronic Santa this year--they can crank up the volume
for the hard-of-hearing residents--and the recent influx of Lillputian immigrants has given the Diminutive Saints people the option of a Living Creche, which is less expensive for them in this tough economy..."
Fortune suddenly smiled on Mr. Schultz, however, for at that moment someone walked into the office looking for someone to play the Easter Bunny for their Easter party, which their obscure denomination always celebrated in the middle of December.
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When Estelle wanted to act like a lady, she was quite capable of doing so, but this was not one of those times. "We want a real Santa Claus, not a stupid robot!" she declared, blue eyes flashing and faded red hair bouncing with every consonant that she spit out.
The Manager of the Golden Sunset Retirement Home glanced out the window while he formulated his reply, and happened to notice, passing by on the street, the Santa he had hired the last time.
Mr. Schultz was still determined to be Santa Claus *somewhere*, and was hoping that someone would see him on the street and hire him, which was exactly what happened at Golden Sunset that day. "If you like me as Santa, you'll love some of the *other* things I can do," he said to Estelle after the party, which made some of the less ladylike parts of her tingle with pleasure.....
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Let us march off into Christmasland
With the little drummer boy and his rat-a-tat band,
And nutcrackers, a million strong, with spats,
And jackets red and tall furry hats.
Then six platoons of gingerbread boys,
Half-baked, but making lots of noise.
Ten tons of ersatz snow were made
To trim the floats for the parade,
All with scenes so darned bucolic,
Just the perfect place to frolic.
Here a charming fruitcake house,
There a Clement Moorean mouse
Stirring something. What? Who knows?
Next, bell-ringers strike a pose,
Jingly, jangly revelry,
Then a mountain of a tree.
Hanging from its branches gay
Someone's hung a Chevrolet.
Does it all make sense? Not quite.
Dreaming of a Christmas white
Haunts our days and fills our nights.
"Melchior, I've been meaning to ask why it is that you only talk to me on Christmas Day."
"Considering that I'm a donkey, it's nothing short of miraculous that I'm able to talk even one day a year, Athol, but yes, I do in fact talk on Christmas, and it's probably because of some magic
in the Christmas bells that you hang around my neck."
"So, if I hung those bells around youir beck the other days of the year, you would talk every day?"
"If you put Christmas bells on me when it wasn't Christmas, that would make you a fool, and I don't talk to fools...."
"Neither do I," Athol said, giving Melchior a friendly pat.
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This is snow, the white stuff.
It once came in decorator hues.
Then we decided that white was enough.
Easy to understand. Melt after use.
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I had been unemployed for almost a year, so it was a great relief when a small, obscure denomination hired me to direct the choir the week after Thanksgiving. I noticed that there were pictures of goats everywhere--along the corridors, around the walls of the choir loft, even in the stained glass windows. When we had our dress rehearsal for the nativity pageant, I realized that the animals in the stable were all goats.
Finally, I asked the pastor why his church didn't use oxen or donkeys the way others did.
"That's because we adhere to a strict Trinitarian doctrine," he replied. "Joseph is the Father, Jesus, the Son, and these are the Holy Goats."
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Whenever I told grownups about the "Wish Come True Fairy," they would sigh or avert their eyes. Jennifer (that's my older sister) insisted that the Fairy had done at least one great thing for Mom and Dad in the year since they lost their jobs: the Fairy had sent
a freak electrical storm that deleted our house from the bank's list of properties due for foreclosure. Other stuff, too, but I knew we were overworking the Fairy, especially with our project to have her deliver a new sofa for Christmas. The Fairy had also sent us Spot, a stray dog that we didn't have to feed because the overfed dog next door was happy to share, though Spot was in trouble at the moment for dragging in a huge stocking from God knows where.
On Christmas morning we were crestfallen to see no sofa under the tree, but then we went to the fireplacee and saw that Santa (or, by other reckoning, the Wish Come True Fairy) had left a very fine new sofa in the stocking that Spot had brought....