Prince Albert's Christmas

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Prince Albert’s Christmas

Even the best prepared among us cannot anticipate everything contingency, and so everyone finds himself (the pronoun is gender-neutral) in a series of traffic jams and shopping lines just before Christmas, feeling that perhaps Scrooge was right.

Advent, after all, is intended to be a season of quiet reflection, not a descent into the serial cruelties of a Secret Santa gift exchange. Cue Scrooge stealing Tiny Tim’s crutch.

And then there is the annual cycle of What Christmas is Really All About selfies on the telescreen, as if that topic weren’t covered far more accurately in the Gospels.

One cannot get through Advent without being told yet again that the happy little nonsense song about the twelve days of Christmas is a secret Catholic catechism. Sure, and each candy cane is poisoned by cackling vampire Jesuit Templar Masonic spies who are guardians of Jesus’ earthly DNA which they have concealed for centuries in a mysterious glowing brussels sprout buried in a Prince Albert can behind a convenience store directly across from Oak Island in Nova Scotia in a direct solar-lunar-astral line with Jerusalem which must be true because it was on tellyvision.

Heaven knows what dark mysteries silly men who ought to know better might find in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Since your ‘umble scrivener has not been vouchsafed any new revelations about Christmas, he submits instead a few family-friendly, non-Scrooge, no-shopping-required wheezes suitable for Twelfth-Night merriment around a merry bonfire:

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “Why, yes, son, we do.”
Small boy: “Then you’d better let him out before he suffocates!”

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “Why, no, son, we don’t.”
Small boy: “Uhhh…”

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “Prince Albert is, like, you know, so yesterday. However, we do have a festive selection of cigars rolled from Cuban-seed tobacco by barefoot maidens who breathe clean mountain air and think pure thoughts. Now this cigar, the Hoya de Bulgaria, is a bargain at only $25 plus applicable taxes.”
Small boy: “I sure miss Prince Albert.”

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “Yes, and he needs to get out; people are waiting in line.”
Small boy: “Uhhh…”

Small boy making a prank call: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Receptionist: “You dialed the wrong number; this is the No Puffin hotline.”
Small boy: “Uhhh…”

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “A can of what?”
Small boy: “Uhhh…”

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “I say, young chap, this is England. You should ask if we have Prince Albert in a tin.”
Small boy: “Uhhh…”

Small boy to store clerk: “Mister, do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
Clerk: “This is Newfoundland, lad. You should ask if we have Prince Albert in a tin, eh.”
Small boy: “Eh?”

Whenever we hear a good joke, a real groaner, we think of those who would enjoy it. But sometimes we realize that a dear friend is no longer with us. This is as true during Advent or Christmas as any other time as we remember with sadness someone who was at the Christmas Eve liturgy last year is not here this year. And so the joke remains unsaid, or perhaps sent only in silence, as the candles are lit in the darkness. The universe is said to have no limits at all, so merry laughter too must a part of the eternal merry Christmas.

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