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'Twas the week before Christmas, when all through our house

Not a creature was stirring, not even that big mouth

Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care

In hopes that the MPD would stay in the Square

The renters were nestled all snug in their beds

While visions of alchy bums danced in their heads

And mummy in her Star Market smock and I in my head spin hat

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter

Away to the window I flew like a flash

Tore through the plastic and threw up the sash

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below

When what to my wondering eyes did I see

But a rented U-haul and my brotherly thieves

With their friend Paul as the driver so lively and drunk

I knew in a moment this was more than a funk

More rapid than eagles these coursers they came

And one whistled, and shouted, and gave them all aim 

To the top of the porch and to the back driveway wall

Now stash away! Stash away! Stash away all!

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly

If police should appear, they'll slip away sly

So up to the back of the house the coursers they flew

With a truck full of trees, and all those wreaths too

And then, in a twinkling, I heard all the proof

The prancing and pawing of each Chippewa boot

As I drew in my head, and was turning around

Down Spring Street came the throngs with a bound

They weren't dressed in furs, but heard something afoot

And their money was crisp as in our hands it was put

And with a bundle of pine they had flung on their back

Bought from the neighborhood peddlers open round back

Their eyes—how they twinkled! Their dimples, how merry!

Their cheeks were like roses, their noses like a cherry!

Their droll little mouths drawn up like a bow

As the bolt cutters and work gloves lay muddied in snow

And with the stump of a lead pipe held tight in his hands

To make them believe the trees were shorn from our own Robbin' Hood land

Some even sold by a broad with a slim little face

Our mother the matriarch known to put all in their place

The chubby and plump, the blind and the deaf

And we'd chuckle when at our back door she'd offer a right or a left

As occasionally with a wink of an eye and a tilt of a head

Some renters were left on sidewalks thought to be dead

Jamie spoke not a word, but went straight to his work

Knocking out redwood Big Bob; without even a smirk

Now back to the telling of our story at hand, the one of the boys selling trees minus the brand 

Rarely giving a wave, from the peak of back porch stairs

Knowing the close shave averted from one of their dares

He reached for his pocket, to his team he gave a bundle

Knowing those fur trees were homed with the humble

Then I heard him exclaim, ere he walked out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good fight!”