'Twas the Night AFTER Christmas, the little known sequel
It's okay, friends, to weep when words move the soul.
Oh, there have been attempts over the years: Robert Archer, 1866; Anne P. Field, 1907; James Stevenson; 1971… But you haven’t read them. You never will. Because, until today, Clement Moore’s epic poem has defied the odds. Until now no one, having grasped its profundity - the upper-stratus of the original - has surmounted that second, formidable peak—UNTIL NOW!
Now, laboriously, deep into Chard, I’ve conquered the massif and assailed the Tower. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, one-hundred years in men’s hearts, has now - Hallelujah! - a doting companion. May a century hence they twaddle as one, inseparably sweet, to dwell in our land. And may you, at the hearth, absorb every word, as if in the pew, the essence of mirth!
‘‘Twas the Night After Christmas”
‘Twas the night after Christmas and all through the house
The only things stirring were indigestion and gout;
The stockings weren’t hung by the chimney with care,
They’d been raided and ravaged, and lay sadly bare.
The children, exhausted, burdened their beds,
While nightmares of aunts kissing lips produced dread;
And babe in her nighty, and I in my briefs,
Had just settled down for a moment’s release.
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I burst from my bunk like a panicked Mad Hatter.
Away to the deck, feeling quite poor,
I ravaged the shutters and pushed in the door.
The moon on the breast of a man in the snow
Gave the lustre of mustard to the garbage below.
When what to my hungover eyes should appear
But a rampaging gang drinking whiskey and beer!
With a wretched old biker, holding a brick,
I knew in a flash I was going to be sick.
More rapid than weasels, his hoodlums he called,
And gave them to kill the display on our wall.
“Smash DASHER! Smash DANCER! Smash PRANCER ‘n VIXEN!
Wreck COMET! Wreck CUPID! Wreck DONNER ‘n BLITZEN!
To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
Dash away, do away, topple them all!”
As damp leaves that wilt before the tempest lay low,
Packing gutters and drains by the road;
He, his whole brood, crowded the porch,
Then entered, my God, behind a lit torch.
And then, my heart sinking, I heard in the pantry
The hemming and hawing from brigands of fancy.
As I drew in my head and was turning around,
Down the hallway he flew, the scamp, with a bound!
He was dressed all in black, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with beer stains and soot.
A look of dismay he expelled from his mouth,
Although he seemed sad, as he doddered about.
His eyes—how they sank! His nose-ring how dreary!
His cheeks were carbuncled, his chin and ‘stache beery!
His outward-pushed teeth like scattered headstones,
I could only imagine had received many blows.
The stump of a joint he held on his lips,
And the front it flashed like a solar eclipse;
He had a broad face and a hippo-sized belly
That drooped in alarm, and scared my wife, Kelly.
He was moody and rank, a little off-center,
But seemed, though, to soften when I said “Sir, we’re renters.”
A nod of his head, a wink of his eye
Soon gave me to know we weren’t going to die.
He spoke not a word, but returned to the stairs,
To tell his fey men to leave their lucre right there.
Then sweeping the place in socks, not a shoe,
They left it a-sparkle and emptied the room.
He sprang to his Harley, to his boys gave a wail,
And cried that NEW reindeer would come in the mail.
Then I heard him exclaim as he roared out of sight,
“We forgot that it’s Christmas. TOO MUCH EGGNOG LAST NIGHT!”
~ Greg Halvorson
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