Night Before Christmas - Scientific Style

A Visit From St. Nicholas

'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 possessors of this potential, including
that species of domestic rodent knows as Mus musculus. Hosiery was
meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric
apparatus, persuant 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
accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual
hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through
their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head
coverings, were about to take slumbrous 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 precise source
thereof.

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, 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 eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer,
piloted by a minuscule aged chauffer so ebullient and numble 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 that patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly,
expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed of the
octet by his or her respective cognomen - "Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et
al. - quiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, 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 location, and was performing a
180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost
celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He
was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from the
oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls
thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the
plethora of 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 subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the
coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium,
or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so
much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment
appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes,
forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a
decorative seasonal circlet of holly. 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
container. He was, in short, 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 so being. By rapidly
lowering and then raising one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one
side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the
aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles
of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally
transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an
abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to
his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of
leave-taking, and forthwith affected 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 burden, and
proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable 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 plenary constituency, and
to that selfsame assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously
beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

-- From Eleonore Johnson at Teknowledge
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