A Dad’s Guide to Christmas Eve
Cookies, Carols and a Cautionary Tale
`Twas the night before Christmas, with snow in the air,
Mom would wrap presents, and I, Dad, would dare,
To cobble the gifts, to assemble, get ready,
The trike and the train set, the mechanical teddy.
At first, I was dazzling, snapped A into B,
Linked stanchion to upright, some handyman, me.
I breezed through a wagon, slid wheel onto axle,
With style and with flourish, built a toy pterodactyl.
We kvelled, meaning beamed, over talking Miss Piggy
Our spirits were high, our pudding quite figgy.
But when I got to the fruit and poured out the box,
I started to feel a bit warm in my socks.
Two hundred pieces, some cute plastic pears,
Just reeked of forced labor in Asia somewhere
Alas and alack, there were no directions.
Or step-by-step drawings to guide me though sections.
I panicked and forced a small conical part,
Down the length of a fruit bin — an ominous start.
I twisted and bent, squeezed, did some thumping,
Within eight or nine minutes, my temples were jumping.
I used pliers and wrenches, this wasn’t much fun,
Then a corkscrew, a chisel and soldering gun,
The wild in my eye, the cock of my head,
Soon let my wife know that she had much to dread.
The woman I loved had a reason for grievin’
Know The Three Christmas Kings? I’d turned into Stephen.
My eyes how they flashed, my forearms were throbbing,
My love put down her cocoa, started quietly sobbing.
Off came my sweater, then the tee-shirt beneath,
And annoying Flap L? Chewed it off with my teeth,
But things really went south in the bright Christmas clamor
When I used by left arm as a fruit-stand Yule hammer
It hurt like the Dickens, but things got worse still.
When I tried to use Barbie’s foot as a drill.
Far from elf-like I hunkered, ripping cardboard and plastic,
I inveighed against Christmas, a savage bombastic.
I lambasted eggnog, all this good cheer was stupid,
As were holly and ivy and Blitzen and Cupid.
I spun out of control, a desperate apostle,
What was truth? What was life?
And what in God’s name was wassail?
I was frantic, a wild man, a creature worth loathing.
Stripped of hope, stripped of words
Stripped of most of my clothing.
I tried to forge onward. I sucked down some rum
And then closed a hinge on my Christmas-Eve thumb,
I howled out in pain. There arose quite a clatter.
I sprang from the rug so the blood wouldn’t spatter.
I grabbed for coat, wrapped the wound with a wreath,
The stumbled, like Lear, out onto the heath.
Got into my car, put key in ignition,
On my drive said a prayer of Christmas contrition.
In the e.r., some angels stopped my yelps and the gore.
They sent me home healed and I slinked through the door.
Somehow the dawn came, and brought Christmas Day,
The kids bounded downstairs on sugar-plum day,
They loved the damn fruit-stand, this bounty of Santa’s
And didn’t notice the blood on the plastic bananas.
The children they frolicked, lit up with Yule glee.
I staggered upstairs — no merry gentleman, me.
I crawled to my bed, all alone, out of danger,
Then thought of a child, away in a manger.
I thought of redemption, a new world, a savior,
I thought of my night of psychotic behavior.
I thanked the Lord softly that all was so well,
That the children were hearty this joyous Noel.
The sound of their voices going gaily berserk,
Soon gave me to now we had done some good work.
Then, my wife came to see me, and sweet-kissed by brow
She checked on my bandage, living up to her vows.
And I heard my love whisper as I passed out, near dead,
“Merry Christmas, you fool,’ my Mrs. Claus said.
