Bindle Bells, Bindle Bells: December 26, 2008

In which Santa is a hobo and Dickens is fartacular.

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Grungy-looking dude (source: http://www.fromoldbooks.org) Apparently it is Hobo Week and nobody remembered to tell me (nor is it marked on my free health wall calendar, which it probably should be, because hobos/being a hobo could be hazardous to your health — or it could be your health goal, whatever, I don’t judge). I am basing this on the increasing frequency with which I am hearing/reading the word “bindle”, which has come up at least once a day during this past week. To be perfectly frank, I am not even sure what a bindle is. Logic and context tells me that it’s probably a kind of pack for carrying personal belongings, but for some reason the first thing it made me think of was owl pellets, and I do not feel like looking up terms that may lead to photos of half-digested mice.

Of course, it is also Christmas week, which may be related somehow — when you think about it, what is Santa but a giant hobo? Let us review the facts:

  1. He is old
  2. He has a shaggy beard
  3. He carries a sack
  4. He moves from place to place with no fixed location (although he claims to be the Emperor of the North Pole or something, which is just a way of saving his hobo dignity)
  5. He sneaks into your house and steals your food (and maybe your booze, too, or was that just the Santa that came to my house?)
  6. You never actually see him, because society has conditioned you to be blind to the plight of people like him, but you leave donations for him anyway because it salves your middle-class conscience
  7. If you are naughty, he will take you away to be his road kid, which sounds fun until you get to the part about sexual favors in exchange for learning the ropes

Be serious, now: if you found this guy sleeping on your steps, would you let your kids go anywhere near him? Or, God forbid, sit on his lap? Not unless they wanted body lice and possible molestation for Christmas.

Anyway. Hobo Santa has come and gone, leaving us nothing but a pile of cat crap in the middle of our bathroom rug. My husband insists the kittens must have done this, not Santa, but thinking back over the past year I am pretty sure we’re high enough on the naughty list that a lump of coal just wasn’t going to cut it. This must be the Deluxe Naughty Package. And we didn’t actually see the kittens do it, and it was right at midnight on Christmas Eve, so: bad cats or Hobo Santa? I know which one gets my vote, and I think Sherlock Holmes would agree.

Aside from that little bump in the road on the rug, Christmas went well. There were no holiday fights, no eggnog headaches, no second-hand fruitcakes. I also shamelessly beg for your props re: not sticking my foot in my mouth and mentioning Santa’s unreal status in front of my little nieces. For me, that is incredibly self-possessed; usually I am blurting out truths like a machine gun spitting out bullets, all “Santa isn’t real! God is a fake! Elvis is dead, and LIBERACE WAS GAY!!!” If my nieces found out about Liberace, it would shatter their glittery world. Right after they asked who he was, of course.

The only thing missing was a Tiny Tim to say, “God bless us, every one!” We do have Brownie the cat, who fits the tiny qualification, but he just mewls irritably and then farts like a colicky horse, which is less heart-warming and more stomach-churning. That is just one reason Dickens did not keep his original ending, which ended with “Gassy” Tim chirping, “God bless us, every–*PFFFFTTTTT!*” and the rest of the Cratchit family trampling each other in their race to get out the door. The other reason was that Dickens’s publisher didn’t think it would go over too well in Victorian England, what with all the starchy churchy the-sun-never-farts-on-the-Empire types, and advised him to wait for the Windsorians instead. Because his publisher was psychic, see, and — well, you will just have to read my tell-all book. Which will be published in the Krtaaxxian reign, under Mflaavik II.

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