'Tis the season for Christmas jokes. I found this online, and decided to convert it back to verse. You can find the oft-quoted technical prose version here, and the broadly known version here.
"'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding Yuletide celebration,
and throughout our place of residence,
kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential,
including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended
from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus,
pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist
among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.
The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective reposery accommodations,
were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations
of variegated fruit confections
moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.
My conjugal partner and I,
attired in our nocturnal head dress,
were about to take slumberous advantage
of the hibernal darkness
when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds
there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance
that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose
for the purpose of ascertaining the source's precise origins.
Hastening to the casement,
I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration,
noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without,
reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation,
(which might be said to rival that of the solar meridian)
thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to envision
a miniature airborne runnered conveyance
drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer,
piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble
that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller.
With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been
more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators,
he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia,
and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective nomenclature;
"Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. -
guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our commorancy,
through which structure I could readily distinguish
the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.
As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile state,
and was performing a 180-degree rotation,
our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap -
entry through the passage of smoke expulsion.
He was clad entirely in animal pelts
soiled by the ebony residue
from oxidations of carboniferous fuels
which had accumulated on the surface of the flue.
His resemblance to a street vendor
I attributed largely to the plentiful
assorted playthings which he bore dorsally
in a commodious cloth receptacle.
His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity,
while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability.
The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance
were engorged with blood which suffused the layers most subcutaneous,
the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem,
the latter instead that of the Prunus avium.
His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled
nothing so much as common loop knots,
and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared
like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water drops.
Clenched firmly between his incisors
was a smoking device whose grey smoky output,
was suggestive of a decorative seasonal holly circlet,
whilst forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput.
His visage was wider than it was high,
and when he waxed audibly mirthful,
his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner
of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical vessel.
In short, he was unavoidably
an obese, jocund, multigenarian[ gnome,
and despite every effort to refrain from so being,
the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome,
by rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid
and rotating his head slightly in one direction,
he indicated that trepidation on my part
was an unnecessary reaction.
Without utterance and with dispatch,
he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery
with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise
extracted from the cloth receptacle he'd transported dorsally.
Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face,
placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory appendage,
inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking,
and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage.
He then propelled himself
in a short vector onto his conveyance,
directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter
to the antlered quadrupeds of convenience,
and proceeded to soar aloft
in a movement hitherto typically seen
chiefly among the seed-bearing
portions of a common weed.
But I overheard this declaration,
his parting exclamation,
audible immediately prior to his vehiculation
beyond the limits of ocular demonstration:
"Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency,
and that self same assemblage upon,
my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial
and gratifyingly pleasurable period betwixt sunset and dawn."
Merry Christmas, everybody.
