Instant Holiday Classic

Holiday gifts, creepier by the dozen

Merry Christmas, Bob! Are you having a nice holiday? What did your wife give you?

Lots of stuff. We celebrate our Christmas over 12 days, not just on the one day.

Interesting! Where did you get the idea for that?

It came to me in an Epiphany…

Ouch. I see what you just did there. The word Epiphany refers both to Twelfth Night celebrations and also to a sudden insight. I don't want to see any more of those.

The first day she gave me one of those fancy little refrigerators for my car, to keep my tapioca pudding cold on my daily commute from our house up in Tesuque.

A car fridge? Does it work?

It sure does! The proof is in the pudding.

Stop that! What else did you get?

Birds. A pair of doves. They're supposed to be very fertile, so we should have little doves flying around the house soon.

Then I got a set of three ornate ink pens from France. And let's see, the next day she arranged for me to get four festive Christmas greeting telephone calls from some folks over in Kurdistan.

So that's four calling Kurds, three French pens, two fertile doves and a car fridge in Tesuque? That kind of rolls off the tongue…

Yep. The next day there was some man-jewelry—five assorted rings from my favorite jewelry shop up in Golden, Colo.

Five Golden rings? What else?

After that, I'm afraid it turned into a total creep show. My wife had six geese flown in from Newfoundland.

From where in Newfoundland, exactly?

I believe the geese were from Gander…

Geese? Gander? I'm warning you, words are not playthings!

It went badly. The six geese got loose on the plane and delayed the flight. The next gift was even worse. She invited seven of her young male admirers over to swim in our pool. Who the hell wants to see that?

So that would be seven swains a-swimming, six geese delaying… Bob, "swain" is the very last archaic 16th-century word you get to use in this column.

The next day she brought eight sketchy serving maids to the house, and they bilked us out of a fortune! Then, a nine-women fencing team came in and began stabbing everybody, followed by 10 napping narcoleptics from Britain's House of Lords. After that, 11 venomous snakes slithered through the house playing pipe music.

On the 12th day, a dozen dentists, all carrying needles full of Novocain, hummed Christmas carols while they numbed every mouth in sight!

Okay, Bob, I've been taking notes, and as I understand it, the final day of your holiday went something like this?

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me,

Twelve hummers numbing,
Eleven vipers piping
Ten Lords a-sleeping
Nine ladies fencing
Eight maids a-bilking
Seven swains a-swimming
Six geese delaying
Five Golden rings!
Four calling Kurds
Three French pens
Two fertile doves
AND A CAR FRIDGE IN TESUQUE!!!

By golly, you nailed it! And a real nice tune, too! The Santa Fe Desert Chorale should record that puppy and make a million bucks!

So what's it like today at your house?

Total chaos! The swains are drooling because their mouths are still numb, the sleeping lords are awake and bleeding from the fencing frenzy, the geese finally got here and their droppings are everywhere!

A viper just swallowed my Golden rings and French pens, and the doves are breeding like there's no tomorrow! At least my tapioca pudding is nice and cold.

Well, I guess that's something.

Excuse me, I do need to answer this call. It's another one of those damned Kurds! Hello? Why thank you, Masoud, and the same to you! Indeed, Masoud, that is a wonderful sentiment: "God bless us, every one, and Merry Christmas, Santa Fe!"

Robert Basler’s humor column runs twice monthly in SFR. Email the author: bluecorn@sfreporter.com

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