Yule poem a favorite target for parodies
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post
We're not going to add to the din, to the clatter, to the unceasing anapestic cacophony of the Yuletide chorus. We're merely here to note that Americans of all ages, races, creeds, colors, professions, degrees of sanity and levels of intoxication just can't stop writing and reciting parodies of Clement Moore's classic holiday poem, the one that starts " 'Twas the night before Christmas."
It's an obsession. It's a fixation. It's a national pastime and a national psychosis.
There's a jazz version, a rap version, a rave version, a punk version. There are versions for Jews, for Muslims, for Buddhists. There are versions sprinkled with Yiddish, Spanish, Arabic, and Croatian.
There's even a Cajun version:
His eyes how dey shine, his dimple how merry!
Maybe he been drinkin' de wine from blackberry.
His cheek was like rose, his nose like a cherry
on secon' t'ought maybe he lap up de sherry.
There are versions for drunks, for stoners, for yuppies, for hippies, for prisoners, for nudists, for hillbillies, for rednecks, for bikers. Some versions celebrate Jesus or Elvis or Marilyn Manson or Led Zeppelin. Others are vicious denunciations of Osama bin Laden or Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich or George W. Bush.
In 1996, Matthew Monroe, then a grad student at the University of North Carolina, was trolling the Internet when he noticed "Canonical list" Web sites — the Canonical List of Pickup Lines ... of Oxymorons ... of Elephant Jokes.
"I was wondering what canonical list I could start," recalls Monroe, 27, now living in Richland, Wash. "I decided to collect variations on 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' since I had seen several versions posted in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1996."
That year, his Canonical List of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Variations consisted of 25 versions. By Christmas 2000, Monroe had 465 versions. This year, he's up to 558 and counting.
Monroe combs the Internet for new versions, categorizes them, then alphabetizes categories, which now range from "Afghanistan" to "Jesus" to "Zepmas (Led Zepellin)."
"Last weekend I found another 20 more that had been posted," he says, "and I added them to the canon."
In many parodies Santa gets shot or stabbed or robbed. In a classic from the 1980s, a Brooklyn resident watches Santa sneak into his apartment:
As he crept off da roof, it became clear to me
Dat dis guy was lookin' to steal my TV
I waited a second until the time seemed ripe
Then smacked him in da head, bada-bing wit a pipe.
Why do Americans keep doing these terrible things to our most beloved Christmas poem?
"It's a sitting duck," says Billy Collins, America's poet laureate. "For one thing, it starts with the word 'twas. And it's got that great imagery: 'visions of sugarplums danced in their heads' — that's rather psychedelic from our point of view."
Frank Jacobs, who has parodied the poem four times for Mad magazine, says: "It's easy to parody, so everybody and his brother and sister are going to try it."
"Writing parody is a very childlike activity," writer X.J. Kennedy says. "Kids are big parody artists. You hear kids singing, 'Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Joker laid an egg.' Kids like to monkey around with the original, and that urge persists into big people."
Another reason people keep messing with Moore's poem is that it's got a great beat. The beat is called anapestic, which means that it consists of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one.
"Anapest is a very jumpy rhythm," Collins says. "The phrase 'bada-bing bada-bang' is anapestic. That's why it's so popular. Most hip-hop and rap music is anapestic. The anapest beat is addictive. You want to keep going."
"It's a very infectious beat, isn't it?" Kennedy says. "The damn thing sort of drums its way into your consciousness and that makes it easy to parody."
