Old Writings, New Tidings

I spent a good part of this morning transferring old stories, articles and essays that I have written from my old laptop to my new one. I do mean "old" laptop - I have had three other primary computers since I used this one. Most of the writings I found were written between 1998-2001. It's a strange Saturday activity to read your own words from ten years ago for a few hours. I expected to hate everything and feel foolish for ever writing them. That happened a few times, but overall I was surprised that I enjoyed reading my own words. A lot of my essays and articles were very serious, but I found a humorous Christmas piece that I did in 2000. It's not Christmas time, but I thought I'd share it anyway. (The other things I wanted to share were 20-50 pages long...I thought that might shut blogger down...and who reads 50 page blog entries anyway?)

Here ya go - It's called, "Christmas as Best as I Can Remember It."

Christmas, as best as I can remember it, is about the birth of a baby named Jesus. Jesus was born on a snowy day in late December in the year zero. His mother’s name was Mary and his father was a fat, jolly man named Chris Kringle. Mary must have gotten remarried later on because Jesus’ last name was Christ, not Kringle.

Mary was a virgin, which means that she was born between May 12 and June 14, otherwise she would be known as the Capricorn Mary or the Leo Mary. Jesus was born in a manger. I don’t really know what a manger is, but I suppose it was like an olden-day version of a 7-11 -- a kind of pit-stop for people who would take road trips on donkeys.

There were a bunch of shepherds in the manger where Jesus was born. An angel with a harp came to the North Pole and told the shepherds that they should go look for a baby with a corn-cob pipe, a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. So, they rustled up some flying reindeer, including one really cool one named Rudolf who had a glowing nose, and flew to Bethlehem, a small town somewhere in the Middle East – Pennsylvania, maybe.

There were also three wise men at the manger that night. They were professors at the local community college and had followed a star from the East. I’m not sure the star’s name, but he must have been someone pretty important like Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood to get three smart guys to follow him through the snow to see a baby. The wise men brought gifts for Mary and the baby: five golden rings, frankenstein, and a partridge in a pear tree.

There was also a little boy named Tiny Tim at the manger. He had come to the manger because his father, a mean man named Scrooge had seen a scary ghost who took all there money. As a result, all Tim could do was try to earn some extra cash by playing his drum for newborn babies. Pa-rumpapumpum

The first Christmas tree wasn’t much to look at either. It was just a puny thing brought by some kid with a yellow and black shirt. That is why it was such a surprise to everyone when a Grinch tried to steal it.

Steal it and steal it he tried to do. But succeed with his crime, he never would do, for whenever he tried to retreat with the tree, a bumble would come and bite at his knee.

It was so cold that first Christmas night that the wise men invited the animals to sleep in the manger -- sheep, cattle and reindeer alike. Despite all that noise, the little baby slept through the night without crying and Mary, Chris Kringle, the Shepherds, Wise Men, Tiny Tim and the kid with the drum knelt politely to pose for a polite figurine designer from Wichita named Charles Dickens . . . and the rest, as they say, is history.