Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie writes a Christmas story almost every year. Here are some of them:
A Costco family Christmas
Do you know about Costco? It's a warehouse-sized store that
sells huge quantities of stuff at wholesale prices. There
are other companies that exploit the same basic idea.
Another big one is Sam's Club, where the motto is, 'When
mere WalMart just isn't enough.'
The season's greetings
"Merry Christmas!" said the Perky Little Clerk to the
Misanthrope as she handed him his purchase. "I'm not a
Christian," the Misanthrope growled.
A canticle for Kathleen Sullivan
"There is no casual death, no easy death, no safely,
comfortably abstract death. There's only the real
death of real people, the death that results in endless,
boundless, horrifying grief even when no one is at
fault. How could anyone be casual about that?"
How to slay dragons...
"I'm talking about choices. The choice is to lie or to die.
To pretend that people with guns can control my behavior, or
to let them kill me. The straights choose to lie. The bents
choose to die. I choose neither."
A future more vivid
"I hate video games," the father confirmed--to the boy, not to
me. "And yet you love them. And a Christmas gift should be what
you love, not what I love--what you love, even if I hate it.
Isn't that a reasonable proposition?"
Christmas at the cemetery--with Bubba
I said, "Shall I write your epitaph? It's what I came here to do,
to tell the truth. How's this?: 'William Jefferson Blythe
Clinton, paternity unknown. He lived a lie and he died a lie and
the only honest parts of him are buried here.' That'll do."
Merry Christmas, Princess Peach
There is only one Christmas, isn't there? Holly and mistletoe. A
golden retriever by the fire. Mom bastes the bird while dad
carols with the choir. Icicles cling to the branches of birch
trees and fat, wet snowflakes tumble down, lit by the yellow
glow of gaslights. Horses nicker and children giggle and lovers
nestle and sigh. We're all dreaming of a white Christmas--and
we're all dreaming.
Courtney at the speed of life
She leaned over and brushed my cheek with her lips and as she pulled
away I felt the downy fine hairs on her cheek and I caught the scent of
her. No fragrance, just the essence of heaven itself.
A dumpster diver's Christmas
I took his hand and didn't flinch. I shook his hand as though he were a
banker or a lawyer or the smiling, beguiling salesman from Munificent
Home and Life. I shook his hand as though he were a human being.
Because he is.
A father for Christmas
People never kick so hard as
when they're down. They don't want to take your stuff away, they
just want to take it and break it. So nobody has anything. Any little
treasure you might have in your life, you have to squirrel it away
where no one can see. Not so they won't steal it, but so they won't
destroy it. Deface it. Desecrate it.
The Spirit of Christmas
"You don't know how to profit by experience!" she steamed. "Every
year you come out here with your bag of goodies, ready to save the
world. And every year something rotten happens. Did you ever think that
maybe the world doesn't want to be saved?"
