Two boys listen intently to Santa Claus telling them he is going to break into their house in the middle of the night, raid their refrigerator and leave stuff in their stockings or shoes. If some kids are excited with this concept others rightly question the morality of such a behaviour.
It was the first week of December many years ago, shortly after I was married, and I was sitting on the couch with the lady who would later become my ex-wife.
– I wonder where we should set up the Christmas tree, she said.
– A Chrismas tree? Nobody is putting a dead tree in my living room! I replied.
– We could get an artificial tree, you know...
– A fake dead tree in my living room? Out of the question!
“The will of Woman is the will of God” they say, so I eventually agreed under one condition: I would be the one putting the angel on the top of the tree.
This wish surprised my wife so I told her how the tradition was born to crown a fir tree with this small winged character:
It was a week before Christmas and Santa Claus woke up in a good mood. He went downstairs to make coffee and put two slices of bread in the toaster for his breakfast. Then he sat down at the table, picked up the newspaper and started to read the front page:
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer arrested last night after failing breath test”
Not believing his eyes, Santa Claus kept reading and learned that the night before, the head of his reindeer team was taken to the police station with cuffs on his hooves after knocking off four chimneys, starting a fight and refusing to take a Breathalyzer test. He was to be jailed until he could be seen by a judge on December 28.
Santa Claus considered replacing his reindeer with goats following Rudolph’s imprisonment related to drinking issues. However, the goats’ lewd behaviour proved to be a more serious problem and Santa quickly dropped the idea.
Still in shock, Santa discovered on the second page that Legolas and Elrond, the leaders of his elfin crew, were announcing that they were going on strike and would cease to manufacture toys before Christmas. They were denouncing bad working conditions, protesting against unpaid overtime and demanding better benefits.
Santa Claus choked on his coffee and spilled the contents of his mug on the red suit that he was wearing. This was particularly annoying since he had just picked it up from the cleaner the day before.
Santa did not chafe easily but now he was simply furious.
To make matters worse, at that moment, the smoke detector went off: Santa’s toasts were burning!
Quickly he got up, opened the windows to clear the air, all the time fuming and swearing in such an uncivilized manner that I cannot repeat it here.
That is when a tiny angel entered the room with a fir tree under his arm and asked:
– Santa, what do you want me to do with this tree?
“... and that is how this beautiful tradition began,” I explained to my wife who looked at me, stunned, and beginning to regret the vows she had taken...
In my opinion, putting an angel on top of a tree is an efficient way to alleviate one’s Christmas frustrations and is preferable to putting up a Festivus pole (despite the latter “very high strength-to-weight ratio”). Many thanks to Mrs. Boudreault for the photo.
Merry Christmas to all the readers of Straight from the Bowels.
No comments:
Post a Comment