The Night Before Christmas – The Rest Of The Story
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care… “
You must remember that poem. Your mom read it to you on Christmas Eve when you were little kids. With me it was 82 years ago right smack dab in the middle of World War Two!
I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m starting to look my age. On Thanksgiving I was shaving and took a long look at my neck. I thought the turkey had climbed up on the sink.
As I was saying, “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house”
Did it ever occur to you that Clement Moore, the poet who wrote ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, may not have been the penultimate family man as we have been led to believe for the last 201 years? Is it possible that old Clem was in fact a heavy drinker? That’s right, ladies, just like your husband, the man you roll into bed every night.
How do we know the night he saw old St. Nick and his reindeer Clement Moore wasn’t half in the bag?
Think about it, he saw some old geezer fly over his wall, climb down his chimney and do the Ho! Ho! Ho thing, yeah, like that’s normal.
Do you realize for 201 years we have been reading the hallucinations of a knee-walking drunk to our children?
In defense of old Clement, I’m sure he was a normal sort of a guy. Perhaps he had a good reason to drink and he really did you know. It’s seems pretty obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Moore did not have a passionate sexual relationship, if they had a sexual relationship at all.
How do we know that?
Because it says right in the second verse, his missus wore a kerchief to bed and he wore a flippin’ hat. Ma, in her kerchief and I in my hat, That’s a dead give-away.
Most couples sleep bare-naked. Well, I suppose the friskier ones wear sheer red panties and a peek-a-boo bra. And there’s no telling what their wives wear.
I don’t doubt when he jotted down the poem, old Clement was pretty well juiced. We learned in the third verse that he tore open the shutters and threw up on the sash — a bit of a turn-off for most women — at least the ones I’ve thrown up on.
We also know the Moores were dirt-poor. They couldn’t even afford to buy a mousetrap, or a cat either. There must have been a whole whack of mice running through the house since he felt it necessary to mention them.
Of course the man was broke: he was a poet. There’s no money in the poetry business. When Wilson MacDonald died they couldn’t afford a funeral. His family put him in a green garbage bag and left him by the side of the road. I don’t even want to know what Mid-Ontario Disposal did with him, but it couldn’t have been good.
No, my friends, it’s time we took a long hard look at the stuff we’ve been reading to our kids every Christmas and we better start with this one.
It doesn’t take too many brains to realize Clement Moore had hallucinations . If you recall he claims to have seen a miniature sleigh and eight tinny reindeer. (Like you I thought they were tiny, but I found the poem on the Internet and it was spelled TINNY.)
One more myth from your childhood destroyed.
But the reindeer couldn’t have been tiny. Just after the war Santa brought my mother a refrigerator for Christmas. The damned thing weighed a ton. It was still running years later when we sold the house. Every time it turned on half of Ontario browned out. But it was a big sucker — a miniature sleigh and eight tinny Clydesdales maybe.
He was starving yet his children were fat. There were visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads so they must have been chubby little suckers. Normal kids dream of Sophia Loren for the boys and for the girls. – I don’t know, visions of me, I guess, but not candy
I don’t know how they got the little nippers to sleep — all wired up on sugar plums and I don’t even know what sugar plums are.
His kids ate them until they were sick because later on he talks of dry heaves that before the wild hurricane fly.
Wait a minute – Oh. That’s dry leaves – well I’m sure they were little porkers nevertheless.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of mid-day to objects below.
Only a drunk or an English teacher, which I suppose could be the same thing, would say “Gave a luster of mid-day.”
I can just hear some of you guys driving home tonight saying to the missus. “I do believe I see a luster of mid-day,” and she will say. “Oh great! It’s a ride program. I told you not to have another drink. Mother was right, I never should have married you.”
(Image Supplied)
