Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Dec. 13, 2010
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Some favorite Christmas stories It is time to stop and think about the true meaning of the Christmas Season, which is ..................... ? If you are younger than, say, 30, you probably think that the true meaning of the season has something to do with shiny new electronic devices. But since there have been Christmases long before there have been electronic devices, there must be more to it than that. Consider the following well-loved Christmas stories, not one of which involves an iPad: • A CHRISTMAS CAROL - If you haven’t read this classic Dickens story, then you’ve most certainly seen at least one of the several hundred Christmas Carol movies. It tells about a bitter, resentful young man who turns into a bitter, resentful old man because his parents, Harold and Doreen Scrooge, named him Ebenezer. Ebenezer also resents holidays, and whenever anyone wishes him a Merry Christmas, he flinches, shouts “HUMBUG!” and sprays insecticide in their eyes. And he verbally abuses his clerk, who for some reason or other is a Cratchit. Ebenezer continues with his virulent anti-Christmas anti-Cratchit behavior until one Christmas Eve when he is visited by the ghost of the late reggae singer Bob Marley and by three of Marley’s friends, the Christmas Wailers. After being shown what his old hometown would be like if he didn’t repent, Ebenezer has an epiphany and runs down the street, joyfully shouting “HELLO, BEDFORD FALLS, MERRY CHRISTMAS OLD BUILDING AND LOAN!” etc. Of course nobody understands, since he lives in London. To his credit, however, Ebenezer does buy a nice pair of second-hand roller skates for the crippled Cratchit boy, Teensy Weensy Tim, who grows up to be strong and tall, and changes his name to the much more manly Teensy Weensy Chad. • IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE - This is basically an updated version of the Dickens story, except that the main character, George Bailey, is a nice guy who is married to Donna Reed. He has a guardian angel named Clarence who keeps him from committing suicide by getting him drunk on mull wine at Nick’s Neighborhood Bar and Strip Club. The Scrooge character is called Old Man Potter in this movie, but unlike Ebenezer he doesn’t repent and buy a fat turkey for George and his family. At the end of the movie a bell on the Christmas tree rings and George reaches into his pocket and shouts, joyfully, “ZUZU’S PETALS!” It is all very meaningful and heartwarming, and proves that no matter how dismal your prospects may seem, there are other people out there who get confused by movie dialogue, too. • THE GIFT OF THE MAGI - O. Henry not only produced some excellent candy bars, but also some excellent short stories, most of which had neither peanuts nor caramel. “The Gift of the Magi” is about a young married couple who live in a big city and are short on funds at Christmas time. So they pull a bank heist. No, actually they are honest, hard-working young people who are broke but need to buy each other something. The husband, let’s call him Ricky, pawns his pocket watch, which was handed down to him by his grandfather, who was on a ladder at the time. He uses the money to buy his wife some lovely tortoise shell combs for her long, luxurious red hair which hangs down to her waist and is always getting into the corned beef and cabbage when she cooks. Meanwhile his wife, who I believe was called Lucy, has gone and sold all of her long, luxurious red hair to another pawn shop which has a sign outside that says “We buy hair. No questions asked.” With her money she buys Ricky a watch chain. So on Christmas morning there they sit, a man with a watch chain and no watch, and a woman, bald as a jug, with some fancy hair combs. Obviously they both have some ’splaining to do. But they are happy, because they have each other, and the strong suspicion that neither of them is very bright. • THE HOMECOMING - This is a Christmas story about a family of simple, hard-working Virginia mountain people–the Gumps. No, my mistake, make that the Waltons. The main character in this moving holiday drama is John Boy Walton, with a crowd of supporting family members including Grandpa Man Walton, Grandma Woman Walton, Daddy Man, Momma Woman, and children with names like Jim Bob and Billy Bob and Sue Ellen Bob and J. R. Bob and Crispus and Oleander and Goat Boy and Little Turnipseed. The plot involves Daddy Man getting lost on Christmas Eve during a blizzard and John Boy being dispatched by the entire Walton congregation to go fetch him home. They figure that John Boy, who is not the brightest bulb on the tree, will be easy to spot in a snowdrift due to that dark mole the size of a dinner plate on his face. So anyway, as best as I can remember, John Boy winds up getting drunk on bathtub gin while visiting the Baldwin sisters and staggers home in the dark and Daddy Man finds his way home all by himself. The family rejoices, and late that night, as the lights in the old farmhouse go out one by one, each and every single one of them says good night to each and every single other one of them, in alphabetical order, including all the Boys and Bobs and Mans and Womans and any cousins that might have straggled in during the blizzard. The ritual takes only fifteen or twenty minutes, and then the show is over. This show was so popular that it spawned an entire TV series. Go figure. • A CHRISTMAS STORY - This is not just any Christmas story, it is “A Christmas Story” written by Jean Shepherd. It is about a sweet little blond boy with glasses whose father wins a large table lamp shaped like one of Betty Grable’s legs (her right leg, I believe). The father tells his son that Betty Grable’s leg is the true meaning of Christmas, and also teaches him to cuss like a sailor and buys him a high-powered BB gun for Christmas. This is probably a bad idea, given the boy’s opinion of his little brother, who is constantly snorting like a pig at the dinner table. The movie version came out in 1983, and became an immediate holiday favorite due to the Betty Grable leg lamp. If you read or watch all five of these Christmas stories, we believe that while you might not learn the true meaning of Christmas, at least you might learn some valuable life lessons. Or possibly not. |