Irv Oslin presents his annual holiday cheer, outdoors fun and (of course) beer

(With apologies to Clement Clark Moore, Major Henry Livingston Jr., or anyone who happens to read this.)

’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the camp,

Not a creature was stirring, not even an ant;

Our stockings were hung from the clothesline to air,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

Joe in his hammock, and Curt in his sack,

Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap;

Then out on the stream there arose such a splatter,

I sprang from my tent to see what was the matter;

The moon lit the river a mile upstream,

And revealed a glimpse of an unlikely scene;

What I saw then, gave me a start — ’twas a miniature sleigh pulled by eight thrashing carp!

With a gaunt little driver who looked kind of sick,

Was this just a nightmare, or was it St. Nick?

I dove into my tent and crouched low to the ground,

Past Joe’s hammock St. Nicholas came with a bound;

He looked down in the dumps, a right haggard old elf,

And I gasped when I saw him, in spite of myself;

With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

He said, “Don’t call me Nick, because my name is Fred!”

He went on to explain as I cowered in shock,

That St. Nick got the kids from preteens to tots,

But the Yule gods had kicked Fred right under the bus,

And condemned him to working with riffraff like us;

He hoisted his sack and went straight to his work,

And he filled all our stockings, then called me a jerk,

And laying a finger aside of his nose,

He let fly with a booger that just missed my toes;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his carp gave a whistle,

And away they all swam, like a shot from a pistol.

But I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight,

“You asked for some Foster’s, I gave you Bud Light!”

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Outdoors holiday cheer: Irv Oslin revisits 'A visit from St. Nicholas'