Christmas Humor

T'was The Night Before Christmas - Scientific Style

Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
preceding the annual yuletide celebration,
and throughout our place of residence,
kinetic activity was not in evidence
among possessors of this potential,
including that species of domestic rodent
known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended
from the forward edge of the
wood burning caloric apparatus,
persuant to our anticipatory pleasure
regarding an imminent visitation
from an eccentric philanthropist
among whose folkloric appellations is
the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings,
comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose,
were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations
of variegated fruit confections
moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.
My conjugal partner and I,
attired in our nocturnal head coverings,
were about to take slumbrous advantage of the hibernal darkness
when upon the avenaceous exterior portion
of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance
that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity
from my place of repose for the purpose of
ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement,
I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration,
noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without,
reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation,
might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself -
thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold
a miniature airborne runnered conveyance
drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer,
piloted by a minuscule aged chauffer so ebullient and numble
that it became instantly apparent to me
that he was indeed our anticipated caller.
With his ungulate motive power travelling at
what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity
that patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly,
expelled breath musically through contracted labia,
and addressed of the octet by his or her respective cognomen -
"Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. -
quiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode,
through which structure I could readily distinguish
the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location,
and was performing a 180-degree pivot,
our distinguished visitant achieved -
with utmost celerity and via a downward leap -
entry by way of the smoke passage.
He was clad entirely in animal pelts
soiled by the ebon residue from the oxidations
of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof.
His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed
largely to the plethora of assorted playthings
which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity,
while his submaxillary dermal indentations
gave every evidence of engaging amiability.
The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance
were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers,
the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem,
the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry.
His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much
as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment
appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece
whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput,
were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly.
His visage was wider than it was high,
and when he waxed audibly mirthful,
his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner
of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container.
He was, in short, neither more nor less than
an obese, jocun, multigenarian gnome,
the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome
despite every effort to refrain from so being.
By rapidly lowering and then raising one eyelid
and rotating his head slightly to one side,
he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch,
he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery
with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise
extracted from his aforementioned previously
dorsally transported cloth receptacle.
Upon completion of this task,
he executed an abrupt about-face,
placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition
to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward
in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith affected his egress
by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage.
He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance,
directed a musical expulsion of air
through his contracted oral sphincter
to the antlered quadrupeds of burden,
and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable
chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed.

But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately
prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility:
"Ecstatic yuletide to the plenary constituency, and
to that selfsame assemblage, my sincerest wishes
for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly
pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."