’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.1
’Twas the day before the opening of Santa Claus season, and on the way to his first holiday gig, Santa’s helper Walter Roach made a very important stop — to say goodbye to his reindeer — No! — to see his hair colorist. After all, if Santa’s beard isn’t as white as the snow, then he can’t be the real Santa. And Roach is about as real as a Santa Claus can be.
No, he isn’t the jolly fellow who lives at the North Pole. He’s a sixth grade teacher at Norwood Creek Elementary School, where the little kids reverentially believe that he’s the real deal.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.
And Mama in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.
For Roach, 63, the Santa persona isn’t just something he puts on seasonally for parties and festive yuletide functions. No, his red suit, beard, morbid obesity, and jingle bells are for real. Since entering the Santa Claus business eight years ago, Roach has embraced the look and character of the Claus year round. Scorning the role of a nifty elf, Roach morphed into the Big Guy himself.
It wasn’t that difficult. At 6 foot 3 and 287 pounds, with his ample teacher voice and snow white hair, he doesn’t exactly blend into the crowd. Add the twinkly grin and striking white beard, and it’s no wonder wide-eyed post-modern munchkins stare at him wherever he goes.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
And he goes a lot of places. Roach is quite the entrepreneur. This year Roach has 64 gigs lined up between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, ranging from corporate galas and parades to school visits and small private parties. He also books jobs from $125 for a 20-minute “fly-by” to $225 an hour if he brings along an elf and Mrs. Claus. Mrs. Claus isn’t Mrs. Roach. There is no way Mrs. Roach is going to look like Mrs. Claus.
But she is willing to enjoy the fame. And money. This summer Santa Claus is taking his comparitively petite, svelte wife, Debbie, the real Mrs. Claus, sort of, to Tuscany on his Santa earnings.
Ho! Ho! Ho! Way to go, Santa! Oh, I like this. Very American wouldn’t you say? Business and idealism, mixed together. As American as apple pie.
Ho! Ho! Ho! Like oil and water, brother. But who cares? It is the delusion that counts, the delusion. On the way to reality we can always go to the hair stylist an get our beards colored white — again! Ho! Ho! Ho!
Ho! Ho! Ho! Scientists know that absolute objectivity has yet to be attained. So why not believe in Santa Claus?
Because Santa is not real. He is not poetic either.
Theologian Walter Bruggemann, in The Poetic Imagination writes, “To address the issue of a truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets that speak against a prose world. . . . By prose, I refer to a world that is organized in settled formulae. . . . By poetry, I mean language that moves, that jumps at the right moment, that breaks open old worlds with surprise, abrasion and pace. Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of reductionism.”2
I am all for poetry. But I am not for Santa. Santa is anything but objective. Nothing is objective or impartial about the Big Guy.
Are people better at making observations, discoveries, and decisions if they remain neutral and impartial? No. As Alice in the rabbit hole looking for truth learns, as the poet eloquently probes into the cosmos understands, truth is not dependent upon objectivity.
The problem with Santa, really, is that he requires no imagination at all. Nothing really is poetical about him. Jolly and fat and delusional as all get out, Santa is the perfect mascot for post-modern America.
Knowledge will be pursued and it will be found, but only by those who love and who find truth. Objectivity, as Alice found in her crisis, as the poet understands in his craft, is impossible. And undesirable. Are people better at making observations, discoveries, and decisions if they remain neutral and impartial? Absolutely not. And, by the way, Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life!
Santa is the way of delusion, narcissism, and subjectivity.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
Whatever.
Science Test
The science test is a 40-question, 35-minute test that measures the skills required in the natural sciences: synthesis, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, critical thinking, and problem solving. You are not permitted to use a calculator on the science test.
The test assumes that you are in the process of taking the core science courses (earth science, biology, chemistry, physics) with special emphasis on earth science and biology.
The test presents seven sets of scientific information, each followed by a number of multiple-choice test questions. The scientific information is presented in one of three different formats:
• data representation (graphs, tables, and other schematic forms)
• research summaries (descriptions of one or more related experiments)
• conflicting viewpoints (expressions of several related theories)
The questions require you to:
• recognize and understand the basic features of, and concepts related to, the provided information
• examine critically the relationship between the information provided and the conclusions drawn or hypotheses developed
• generalize from given information and draw conclusions, gain new information, or make predictions. (from the ACT website)
Active Reading
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn6
Mark Twain
YOU don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly — Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is — and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece — all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round — more than a body could tell what to do with.
The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them — that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people.
They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.
Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, “Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry — set up straight;” and pretty soon she would say, “Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry — why don’t you try to behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good. (chapter 1)
How does Twain create humor in this passage?
Twain is writing to an audience that does not have televisions or computers. Twain has to use language to paint a picture for his audience. Notice the descriptions that Twain uses. Write two here.
