It’s that time of the year again. In early November, I told my son Justin, “about 12months ago I gave a big sigh of relief, as the stress of Christmas was over for that year.”
“Stress of Christmas you say?” asked Justin.
“Well of course!” I replied. “We work hard throughout the year, ramp it up towards the end of November, and follow through right up to Christmas! We buy all the presents and get them wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree! But that jolly fat guy with the white beard and red suit gets all the credit!
“Let me tell you about Christmas when I was a young boy back in Norway,” I said. “My brothers and I were still in school, and we would make the presents for our parents at the woodworking shop with the help of our teacher. Mom and Dad would buy our presents at the store and wrap them, hide them in the storage closet and give them to Santa Claus, who would bring them into our living room and personally hand them out on Christmas Eve. We had to bow our heads, shake Santa’s hand and say ‘thank you, Santa!’ I remember one year when your uncle Kjell and I had put cross-country skis on our wish lists.
“The week before Christmas we ran to our mother and said: ‘We’ve got to get hold of Santa!’
“‘Why is that?’ asked our mother.
“‘We know we were not supposed to go in there, but we have to cancel our request for skis, because we just found two pairs of cross-country skis in the back corner of the storage room!’”
We were led to believe that the elves, Santa’s little helpers, who were not to be referred to as subordinate Clauses, had made our presents in Santa’s workshop on the North Pole. There was a time when one of the elves had gotten depressed and was sitting on a stool moping. He was considered to have very low elf esteem. Dad told us that Santa’s brother had crashed on the South Pole, and he is deemed to be a lost Claus.
My identical twin brother Kjell and I were also very much alike mentally and in the way we behaved, not like the twins in the following story. A farm family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. They were mentally opposite in every way. One was an eternal optimist, the other a doom-and-gloom pessimist. Just to see what would happen, on Christmas Day their father filled the pessimist’s room with every imaginable toy and game, whereas the optimist’s room was loaded with horse manure.
That night the father passed by the pessimist’s room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly. “Why are you crying?” the father asked.
“Because my friends will be jealous, I’ll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I’ll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken,” answered his son the pessimist. Passing the optimist twin’s room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure.
“What are you so happy about?” asked the father.
To which his optimist son happily replied, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”
My uncle phoned from the train station mid-afternoon on December 24 announcing that he and his wife would take a taxi to our house for a surprise visit and join us for the traditional Christmas Eve supper and Christmas celebration. My mother was an impeccable housekeeper, and she rushed around the house dusting and vacuuming. She put my father and older brother Moritz in charge of cleaning the bathroom, and Kjell and I were told to straighten up the spare bedroom. Just before my aunt and uncle arrived, Mother went to inspect our work. Kjell and I had done a great job with the bedroom, and passed with flying colours. She was surprised that the bathroom which was always very cluttered had been cleaned and tidied up so quickly, but then she saw my dad’s note pinned to the closed shower curtains that said, “Thank you for not looking behind these curtains!”
Close to Christmas Eve, Dad would take us boys into the forest looking for a suitable Christmas tree. He called it “Christmas chopping!” One year it was snowing a bit as we were walking among the trees, and I stuck my tongue out trying to catch a snowflake. My dad saw what I was trying to do, smiled and said, “Son, never try to catch snowflakes with your tongue until you are sure that all the birds have migrated south for the winter!”
Santa’s workshop was very lively as usual with all the elves buzzing around making presents and wrapping them. One of the elves was dressed in a tight gold-trimmed white jumpsuit with a wide black belt and a high collar. He jumped up on the stage with his guitar and started singing Blue Suede Shoes. They called him Elfis!
Everything was ready at the North Pole. The presents were all wrapped and loaded on the sleigh which was parked just outside the kitchen window. Mrs. Claus was busy in the kitchen preparing the big wind-up supper for Santa and all the elves when they heard a pitter patter outside.
“That noise I hear, is that rain or hail?” asked Santa.
Mrs. Claus parted the kitchen window curtains, peered outside and said, “It’s reindeer!”
We all know that Santa scoots around the world in the air on his magic sleigh pulled by reindeer. One year there were so many presents that Santa had no choice but to straddle the big sack full of gifts placed in the seat where he was supposed to sit. All the elves had gone back into the workshop to put away their tools, so there was nobody around when Santa gave the go command to the reindeer. The sleigh was heavy and the runners sat deep in the snow. It jerked as the reindeer lunged forward and Santa toppled off, ending up lying in the deep snow feeling totally elfless, until one of the elves heard him call out, rushed over and elfed him up (oh quit your groaning)!
It is supposed to be eight reindeer plus Rudolph, whereas in fact, and according to the song, there are a total of 10 reindeer. The tenth reindeer is called Olive and she was a kind of a bully.
As the song says, “Olive the other reindeer, used to laugh and call (Rudolph) names!”
Rudolph has a magic red bulb on the tip of his nose, which Santa uses as a guide zooming under the stars to steer the sled to where he wants to go. Before every Christmas season the bulb in Rudolph’s nose must be changed.
And every year one of the elves will ask, “How many reindeer does it take to change Rudolph’s light bulb?”
The other elves always answer in unison, “Eight! One to change the lightbulb and seven to hold Rudolph down!” and then they all laugh and laugh!
Just before Christmas, Magnus, the famous Norwegian world chess champion and about 19 other chess fanatics were set up with 10 tables playing chess in the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Oslo, while loudly bragging about their prowess. Ole and Sven entered the hotel lobby.
“Will you look at that!” said Ole.
“What do you know,” said Sven. “Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer!”
Truls and Sigrun were walking down the street just before Christmas, and they saw a snowman and a snowwoman on a neighbour’s lawn, all dressed up in formal wear.
“I wonder why they are dressed like that?” said Sigrun.
“They’re probably going to the snowball!” answered Truls.
Somebody told Karl that he didn’t have the spirit of Christmas, so he went to the liquor store to get some!
It was just before Christmas and the judge was in a merry mood when he asked Olaf, “What are you charged with?”
“Doing my Christmas shopping early,” answered Olaf.
“Well, that’s usually no offence. This must be a mistake,” said the judge. “How early were you doing your shopping anyway?”
“Before the store opened,” said a subdued Olaf (still groaning, eh?).
When my children were growing up, we would take them to the mall so they could sit on Santa’s knee to tell him how good they had behaved through the year, and then tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. The first couple of years the children would be very shy, and hardly say anything. Justin at one time told Santa that all he wanted was batteries, because he already had all the toys he wanted, but he needed batteries for them. This year I took our little granddaughter Casey to the mall and watched her climb up onto Santa’s lap. Santa smiled and asked her what her name is.
“I’m Casey!” she replied.
“What would you like for Christmas, little Casey?” asked Santa.
Casey’s mouth dropped open. She shook her head in disbelief, gasped and said to Santa, “Huh! Didn’t you get my email?”
I found the following poem, Your Eggnog’s Too Strong,on the internet:
“If you see a fat man…
“Who’s jolly and cute,
“wearing a beard
“and a red flannel suit,
“and if he is chuckling
“and laughing away,
“while flying around
“in a miniature sleigh
“with eight tiny reindeer
“to pull him along,
“then let’s face it…
“Your eggnog’s too strong!” (Author unknown)
I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year!
