Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Oh My!
While everyone knows that L. Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz series of books, it may come as a surprise that the prolific children's book author also gave us an unusual take on the Santa Claus legend with the 1902 publication of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.
Here's Santa Claus as you've never seen him before.
Fun fact: According to Wikipedia, "in Baum's 1909 Oz book, The Road to Oz, Santa Claus is one of guests of honor at Priscess Ozma's birthday party in the Emerald City. They return to the Laughing Valley in giant soap bubbles created by The Wizard of Oz."
Advertisments
Feature
Nina L. Diamond's 2011 Holiday Parody
'Twas the Night Before Christmas on Twitter
'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Every creature was tweeting, even the mouse;
The stalkers and trolls had been blocked with care,
And we hoped that the spam bots soon would be rare.
New features were nestled somewhere, Twitter said,
These visions of redesign scrambled my head;
I wanted to kvetch long and loud in all caps,
I resisted and studied the pages like maps.
Then in my timeline there arose such a clatter,
All over the screen, there was something the matter.
Tweeps through their windows had seen something dash,
It gave them a shudder, it appeared in a flash.
They rose from their desks, looked up from the phone,
And mustered the courage to face the unknown,
When what to their twittering eyes should appear,
But a parody Santa and eight fake reindeer.
The funny old driver was clever with schtick,
He said he was filling in for old St. Nick.
He rapidly giggled, his reindeer the same,
Down on the ground, he called them by name:
@SunSwept, @mikecane, @playbill, @SpaceX!
@NASA, @bebird, @spotwade, @Moon_Ex!
To the top of the house to make jokes, have a ball!
Hashtag game, hashtag game, hashtag game all!
With dry wit that makes every parody wry,
The reindeer wisecracked as they aimed at the sky.
And up to the house-top the jokesters they flew,
With the sleigh full of gag gifts, parody Santa too.
The tweeps were live-tweeting what they heard on the roof:
the footsteps fake reindeer make in a spoof,
And hashtag one-liners, and joking around,
When via the chimney parody Santa came down.
He was dressed like the real one but his beard was fake,
His clothes covered a tummy big pillows did make.
A bundle of gag gifts was over his shoulder,
He flung it with ease, like a styrofoam boulder.
His eyes filled with mischief, his smile was wide.
Tweeps laughed when they saw all the cookies inside
Peeking out from his pockets, with crumbs on his clothes,
And chocolate chip bits on the tip of his nose.
He pulled out a bottle of milk from his coat,
Took a swig, wiped his mouth, and then cleared his throat.
He filled every stocking, then took out his phone.
He flew up the chimney, leaving tweeps all alone.
He walked to his sleigh and logged in to tweet,
blocked spam bots, grabbed a cookie, and sat in his seat.
We all saw his tweet while his cookie was dunked:
"Merry Christmas to all, don't tweet pics of your junk!"
* * * * *
See Nina’s past Holiday Parodies:
* * * * *
As a journalist, columnist, essayist, and media critic, Nina L. Diamond's work has appeared in many publications, including Omni magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald. She was a regular contributor to a number of "late, great" national, regional, and newspaper Sunday magazines, including Omni; the award-winning South Florida magazine; and Sunshine, the Ft. Lauderdale (now South Florida) Sun-Sentinel's Sunday magazine. She covers the arts and sciences; the media, publishing, and current affairs; and writes feature articles, interviews, commentary, humor/satire/parody, essays, and reviews.
Ms. Diamond is also the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers (Lotus Press) and the unfortunately titled Purify Your Body (Three Rivers Press/Crown/Random House) , a book of natural health reporting which has been a selection of The Book-of-the-Month Club's One Spirit Book Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club. For its entire run from 1984-1998, she was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, which aired on WLRN-FM in Miami. She has appeared on Oprah, discussing the publishing industry, but, in a case of very bad timing, that appearance was two years before her first book was published. She has written her Much Ado About Publishing column for Independent Publisher since 2003.
* * * * *
Follow Nina on Twitter: http://twitter.com/@ninatypewriter
Become a "fan" on Nina's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/NinaL.DiamondFanPage