🚀 go-pugleaf

   Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to all CoCo and OS-9 hacks.
And now... some Yuletide entertainment!!! :-)
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   Ecstatic Yuletide

   'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual
Yuletide celebration and throughout our place of residence, kinetic
activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential,
including that species of diminutive 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. Nick.

   The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective
accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual
hallucinations of variegated saccarinose fruit confections performing
choreography through their cerebrums.  My conjugal partner and I, attired
in our nocturnal head-coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of
the Arctic-like gloom 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 precise source thereof.

   Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this
fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without,
reflecting as it was upon the surface of a recent crystalline aqueous
precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian
itself--thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a
miniature airborne runnered conveyance, drawn by an octet of diminutive
specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so
ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was
indeed our anticipated beatified caller.

   With this ungulate motive power traveling at a greater 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 cognomen:  "Now Dasher, now Dancer," et al, guiding them to
the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could
readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the sum total of the
thirty-two cloven pedal extremities.

   As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location and was performing
a pi radians pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved, with utmost
celerity, via a downward saltation, entry by way of the ceramic smoke
passage.  He was clad entirely in animal integuments, soiled by the ebony
residue from partial oxidation of carboniferous fuels.  His resemblance to
a street vendor I attributed to the plethora of assorted playthings which
he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

   His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his sub
maxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability.
The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenances were engorged
with crimson circulatory  fluid which, its chroma suffusing the dermal
layers, approximated the retinal sensation reflected by the Prunus avium,
or sweet cherry.  His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so
much as a flexible, curved strip of wood associated with the American
aborigines and their ambient, hirsute, facial adornment had an absence of
coloring comparable to crystalline frozen hydrogen oxide vapor.

   Clenched firmly between his incisors was the posterior projection of a
calumet whose gray colloidal aerosol fumes, forming a tenuous elliptical
torus about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet
of holly.  His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed
mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of
inpectinated fruit syrup in a colloidal gel state within a hemispherical
container.  He was of Napoleonic stature, neither more nor less than an
obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered
me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from being so
affected by this risiblity.  By rapidly lowering and then elevating one
eyelid and rotating his head slightly eccentricly, he indicated that
trepidation on my part was superfluous.

   Without utterance, but with noticeable dispatch, he commenced filling
the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the articles of
merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally
transported cloth receptacle.  Upon completion of this task, he executed an
abrupt pi radian rotation about the vertical axis, placed a single manual
digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium
forward in a gesture of leave taking, and effected his egress by saltation
up the smoke passage through which he had made ingress.

   He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his rustic winter
conveyance.  Contracting his oral sphincter, he emitted a shrill series of
notes to the antlered quadrupeds of burden and proceeded to soar aloft in a
movement hitherto observed chiefly among the seed bearing portions of a
common weed.  But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately
prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic
Yuletide to the  planetary constituency, and to the selfsame assemblage, my
sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable
period between sunset and dawn."