Tis the season

I do a lot of bitching about what I don't like, here's a couple things that I enjoyed!

Chet Williamson does a parody of the Christmas classic "Twas the Night before Christmas" by Clement C. Moore called "Pennsylvania Dutch, Night Before Christmas". It's illustrated by James Rice 

(see if we can get a couple verses in without ver-hutzen the Copyright police)

It vas night before Christmas, und all over the farm,

Nothing vas schusslich,* no cause for alarm.

The socks vere all hung by the chimney chust so,

Vith the hopes they get filled up from ankle to toe.

The nixnootzes schnoozing vithout any sound-

In their heads clear toy candies been dancing around.

And Mama and me , vell, ve outened the light,

Crawled under the covers, and schnuggled up tight.

*schusslich  (SHUS-LICK)- moving around

I could maybe get in a twist about the translation of "schusslich" not being accurate but I guess I'm going soft in my old age. I was reading to the grandkids the other day and since it's Christmas time I thought I would read them the original version of "Twas the Night before Christmas". So I asked my wife if we had an illustrated book of it and she said "no, but we have a Pennsylvania Dutch version of it". My heart kind of sank because I really didn't expect it to be any good. (I'm just so fricken used to being disappointed when it comes to writing about the Amish) But to my surprise it turned out that I liked it! I think the grandkids liked it to! 

Some dude named Belsnickel has replaced Santa Claus. I grew up Amish and had never heard of him so that was just a tad foreign for me, but for some reason, replacing the reindeer with cows was infinitely charming for me. The whole damn schtick is hokey to begin with, so why can't we have a hokey story that's hokey our way? 

   

(a couple more verses)

Four cows and four steers-they vere harnessed somehow,

And vere dragging behind them an old-fashioned plow,

And there, chust behind it, as sour as a pickle,

Vas a fella ve knew had to be the Belsnickel!

(cut)

"Now Jakie, now Becky! Now Rachel, Josiah!

On Menno, on Sarah! Esther! Obadiah!

And vatch vhere you're going! There's nothing unviser 

Than stamping your hoofs into stray fertilizer!"

The realism of the fertilizer reference is superb. Williamson makes use of the weight difference between cows and reindeer to use this line "I'll send over Stolzfus your broke roof to fix."

The idea that "our Santa Claus" would know Stolzfus and would tell him about our broken roof, personalizes the myth for me.  Even though I'm unfamiliar with Belsnickel, Williamson has him behaving so like one of us, that I can't help but recognize him. 

(talking about side stepping cow shit, for Gods sake! and passing along a message to someone in the community because he's going that way. Meanwhile the dude is Santa Claus, try holding that picture in your mind!) I Loved it!

Not to mix apples with oranges here but there's this person posing as an Amish girl on Twitter. I'm pretty sure that it is not an actual Amish person who's leaving the posts. But having said that, the posts are Amish oriented and I think they're actually quite funny. Enjoy