Speccie: Bah Humbug
 

Chris O'Carroll performed for the Sphere with a very fine effort, I thought. Bill Greenwell and Jerome Betts just failed to get the cigar.

Now all of you must have a verse in your locker for this one. I know I have.

No. 2677: BAH HUMBUG!
You are invited to provide a poem in dispraise of Christmas (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 8 December.

And this is it!

Bah Humbug

Hark the Herod Angels shriek
Bloody kids right through the week.
Children are the Christmas curse;
Ours are ghastly, yours are worse.
Kids are snotty, kids are smelly,
Kids watch yards of Christmas telly.
Hark the Herod Angels wail
Christmas is beyond the pale.

Hark the Herod Angels scream
Christmas is a horrid dream.
In the bathroom, on the stair,
Brawling brats are everywhere,
Making an appalling racket,
Smashing toys that cost a packet.
Hark the Herod Angels yell
Kiddikins are Christmas Hell.

My sentiments about kids, exactly.

My own favorite anti-Christmas quotation is a prose one, and comes from George Bernard Shaw:

"Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred, and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pile of greasy sausages."

Very fine, John and Gail. Enjoyed your poem, John. Also the Scroogian statement from GBS, Gail -- thanks for posting it!

Chris

What! No more humbuggery? Here's another.


Bah Humbug

At Easter time the angel said
That Christ had risen from the dead
And Satan and his minions fled.

At Christmas time the angel told
How living Christ was bought and sold
For many times his weight in gold.

At Christmas time the children write
To some old bearded blatherskite
And stay up half the bloody night.

At Christmas time the in-laws come
To drink my whisky, gin and rum
And quarrel with my dad and mum.

At Christmas time my belly vastly
Swells, my temper frays and, lastly,
The weather’s uniformly ghastly.

Well, you're hard to compete with as usual, John, and I'm just off to the Himalaya (restaurant) for some Nepalese winter-warming soup, but off the top of my brain . . .

one from the heart
 

Peace and goodwill? As if. I know the score.
It's not just shopping orgies, Roger Moore,
unhealthy food and sentimental cheer
shallow and transient as cheap veneer
that make me dread the season. It's the role
it casts me in – a glowing, hearty soul,
which I am not. Supposedly benign,
I nod and smile inanely as we dine.
Each slice of tasteless turkey, each mince pie
curdles my gut like swallowing a lie.
Come early-evening tv time I snub
the tribal madness, sneak off to the pub
throw whiskies down till time is called, then, sunk
in seasonal disgust, distempered, drunk,
throw up my dinner in a midnight taxi.
Christmas? You can stick it up your jacksie.

"Keep the 'Christ' in Christmas,"
you say. I say to you,
"Take the 'Christ' from Christmas,
and take the 'mas' out too."

Eliminate the carols.
Remove the ho ho ho's.
Spare the lovely evergreens.
Extinguish Rudolph's nose.

But leave behind the part I like,
the holiday's main payoff:
let each December twenty-fifth
remain a sacred day off.

I was just about to remark that Christmas misanthropy seems a British thing, and up pops Roger to prove me wrong.

Thanks for introducing me to 'blatherskite', John; I'd never heard of it.
What a truly wonderful word. I absolutely love it!

And I love your poem, though I think the first two stanzas are a bit redundant.

You know you may be right, Jayne. I shall reconsider.

Those last three stanzas only use 3/8ths of your line limit, John, so you could lose the biblical bit and continue with the funny 'now' stuff. There's tons more scope yet - crappy presents, crackers with plastic rubbish in, overcooked sprouts... and lots more - only at Christmastime.

OK. How about this then?


Bah Humbug

At Christmas time we peddle junk
Wrapped up in old religious bunk
And everyone gets very drunk.

At Christmas time my children write
To some old bearded blatherskite
And stay up half the bloody night.

At Christmas time the in-laws come
To drink my whisky, gin and rum
And quarrel with my dad and mum.

At Christmas time my joints are stiff.
They crack and creak. I cough and sniff
And spit into my handkerchief.

At Christmas time my belly vastly
Swells, my temper frays and, lastly,
The weather’s uniformly ghastly.

It's much funnier than the original, John, though I don't care for S4. It's not 'Christmas specific' enough IMO.
And I don't think 'peddle' is quite right either. And... OK, while I'm being so critical (sorry) I wonder whether S3 could be:

At Christmas time the in-laws come;
They quarrel with my dad and mum
And drink my whisky, gin and rum.

From someone who hasn't even got off the starting grid with this one yet... feel free to completely ignore all of the above.

Noted and acted upon. I think I'll stick with the original order for the in-laws though. They drink the booze and THEN they quarrel.


Bah Humbug

At Christmas time I give out junk
Wrapped up in old religious bunk
Before becoming very drunk.

At Christmas time I wonder if
I want to singalong with Cliff.
I think I’d rather be a stiff.

At Christmas time my children write
To some old bearded blatherskite
And stay up half the bloody night.

At Christmas time the in-laws come.
They drink my whisky, gin and rum,
Then quarrel with my dad and mum.

At Christmas time my belly vastly
Swells, my temper frays and, lastly,
The weather’s uniformly ghastly.

Yep, much better without the stiff joints and the 'hanker-chiff', John.

One further suggestion about the in-laws:

How about:

At Christmas time the in-laws come.
They drink me out of gin and rum,
Then quarrel with my dad and mum.

It doesn't matter greatly that there's a 'To' in the same place in S3, but I think the repetition in the first line is sufficient and the other lines need to be a little different from one another.

Scrooged
 

Bah humbug! To Christmas
I'll drink no toast,
though I'm plagued by three spirits
and old Marley's ghost.

Bah humbug! Let Christmas
come on at full throttle.
All the spirits I need
come out of a bottle.

Christmas Down-Under
 

We don't have humbug like you do,
just bug meat on the barbecue.

Christmas is coming,
Politicians getting fat,
Bankers full of Bolly
And the shops are full of tat.

The Nursery School’s Nativity
Is fawningly P C,
Mary’s in a burka
And Joseph is a she.

The Church is full of carollers
In different keys -- and flat,
While muggers steal the pennies
From the old man’s hat.

And underneath the feeble glow
Of eco-Christmas-lights
Some plan its abolition
In the name of Human Rights.

Call it Christmas, call it Yule.
In picking the perfect moniker,
there's just a single, simple rule:
Please don't call it Hannukah.

Happy Generic Day
 

Remember that the "C-word"
is something we should shun;
and don't forget the "New Year"
isn't new to everyone.

And so in every card I write
(I think it rather clever):
a very merry you-know-what,
and a good whatever.

Kids, I can remember when every little tyke
was happy with a train set, a baby doll, a bike.
But these days it's an iPad, an X-Box, a PC.
My costs have risen off the charts. What do you want of me?
The elves are out on strike. Though I've done the best I can,
they're overworked and underpaid, and need a health care plan.
Besides, I'm no spring chicken. I'm nowhere near as spry
as I was at five hundred. So children, that is why
I'm planning to retire. I've had about enough.
“Hey!” I hear you crying out, “What about our stuff?”
Frankly, my dear kiddies, I just don't give a toss.
And so I'm off to Florida. Sincerely, Santa Claus.

the true meaning....
 

Take out the office parties,
the carols sung off key,
take out the spicy egg nog,
the reruns on TV,

take out the savoury pudding,
the turkeys, geese or chickens,
take out Zusu’s flower,
for God’s sake, take out Dickens,

take out the decorations,
take out the bloody tree;
but keep the “Gift” in “Giftmas”—
that's good enough for me.


I am so getting in touch with my inner Scrooge.:mad:

maybe next year we'll try a theme party....
 

Dad says “What’d you expect--
A tie or a sweater?”
Mom says "Cheer up,
They don't know any better.
After all, they’re just human.”
Well, duh! So am I.
And I feel more left out
with each year that goes by.
They give gifts to each other,
and forget about me.
Ah, well. Note to self:
“Happy birthday, JC!”

For your listening pleasure:

Tom Lehrer's Christmas Carol

Tum-ta-tum-ta-tum-parum-pum-pum-pum

December’s here and hear the thrum
that crummy kid creates; the dumb
and droning, moaning hum of hum-
bug fills a mall with every strum,
just like a film of sugar scum.
It cloaks and gums the shopping slum,
where Santa’s just a dressed-up bum,
until I think my mind is numb.

But, hey, these complementary rum-
laced egg-nogs go down well; and come
to think on it, why be so glum
when everything here tastes so yum?
More doubles please, Miss Sugar Plum –
parum pum pum pum – one’s for my chum.
Him and his drum.

They seized the airwaves in November,
announcing that the day was near,
and now it’s harder to remember
the sort of news we used to hear.

Their propaganda’s trite and hearty:
they want us all to sing the song;
they want us all to join the party;
enlist our children; play along.

Each year’s stakhanovite campaign
to wrap an ever-tarnished present
seems lengthier and more inane,
yet we pretend it’s bright and pleasant.

The tidings swell and then reprise,
to set us getting, spending more,
we feel beleaguered—quel surprise—
it’s holiday cum psy-ops war.

Frank

Christmas is the middle of an isthmus
linking old and new.

Twelve days feeling bored, depressed and listless,
yet after they are through,

I feel I can return again to business
believing once again what is not true.

A pox on the Christmas spirit
and Humbug to Seasonal Cheer
that lasts for a week in December
and ends with the bells of New Year.

Then pine needles clog up the hoover
and problems pile up by the yard.
Good wishes are, sadly, just transient things --
whatever it says on the card.