Merry Chanukah!
Writing by treason on Sunday, 25 of December , 2005 at 12:25 pm
This is one of those rare times - what is it, four times in the last hundred years? - that Christmas and the beginning of Hanukkah fall on the same day. My Jewish niece in Chicago sent this e-mail message to her Seventh Day Adventist mother in California (my sister, who converted to Judaism when she married her first husband, then went Christian with her second, but always fantasized about becoming a nun).
I went online to see if I could locate the source and found so many parodies of Mr. Moore’s poem that I’ve simply included the spot where I stumbled upon them.
This is worth a look:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/historical/a/twas_the_night.htm
The version of this one was slightly different on the site, so I’ve taken the liberty to morph the two. Here goes:
‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck,
How to live in a world that’s politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to “Elves,”
It seems “Vertically Challenged” they were calling themselves.
And labor conditions up at the North Pole,
Were said by the Union to stifle the soul.
Four reindeer had vanished with much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society,
And the EEOC had just made it quite clear,
That Santa had better not use JUST reindeer,
So Dancer and Donner and Comet and Cupid
Were replaced with four pigs, and you know that looked stupid.
The runners had both been removed from his sleigh,
The ruts were too dangerous, intoned EPA.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard prancing noises on their own rooftops.
Even smoke from his pipe had the people quite frightened
And his fur-trimmed red suit was called “Unenlightened.”
And to show you the strangeness of life’s ebbs and flows
Rudolph sued the old man for the use of his nose.
He had gone on TV and in front of the nation
He had cried out to Oprah for due compensation.
So half of the reindeer were gone and his wife,
Who suddenly said she was sick of this life,
Joined a self-help group and then left in a whiz
Demanding from now on her title was Ms.
And as for the gifts he had nary a notion,
That making a choice could cause such a commotion.
Nothing of leather and nothing of fur
Which meant nothing for him and nothing for her.
Nothing that might be construed to pollute
Nothing to aim at and nothing to shoot.
Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise,
Nothing for JUST girls or JUST for the boys,
Nothing that claimed to be gender specific.
Nothing too warlike or too non-pacific.
No candy or sweets, they are bad for the tooth.
Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth.
And fairy tales, too, while they’re not yet forbidden
Were like Barbie and Ken…just better off hidden.
For they raised the hackles of those psychological
Who said the only good gift was one ecological.
No baseball no football, someone could get hurt.
Besides, playing sports exposed kids to the dirt.
Dolls were too sexist and should be passe,
Nintendo ’twas found, rots your brain cells away.
So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed.
He just couldn’t figure out what to do next.
He tried to be merry, he tried to be gay,
But you’ve got to be careful with that word, they say.
His sack was quite empty, laying limp on the ground;
No suitable gift for this year could be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.
A gift that would satisfy with no indecision,
Each group of all people in every religion;
Every ethnicity, each color and hue,
Everyone, everywhere, yes, even you.
So here is that gift, its price beyond worth…
“May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on this earth.”
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