Christmas Bulwer-Lyttons

Thanks to Charles Schulz' comic strip, Peanuts, many of us are familiar with the line, "It was a dark and stormy night…"[1] That line was originally penned by Edward Bulwer-Lytton [2] in his novel Paul Clifford. The full quote is: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." This line is widely recognized as "purple prose", that is, writing that is overly descriptive, florid, and rambling. Over a year ago my old roommate Ryan introduced me and a few friends to the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest—a contest where the winner is the one who comes up with the worst opening line.[3] We've had fun writing our own bad Bulwer-Lyttons, and this year we wrote some about Christmas.[4] Here are a few I came up with this year:

1. Santa was never the same after he popped out of a chimney into a cauldron of months-old stale lard.
2. After reading the Harry Potter series, Santa's elves decided to try their hand at a strike—never realizing that all Santa needed to make the crossover to automated mass production was the right incentive.
3. Kasey Kringle, Santa's adventurous, yet unknown little brother, gingerly walked through the cave—the slightest misstep could send hundreds of sharpened candy canes tumbling down from the ceiling or find him mired in a deceptively beautiful pool of molten gumdrops.
4. As Santa and the elves slept peacefully, the toys formed a brigade to hunt down the treacherous Raggedy Anne and end her life.
5. It had been many years since Mrs. Claus disappeared, and Santa never said a word about it—and no one suspected why Santa wouldn't let anyone near the coal pile these days.
6. When Holly and Chad found empty bottles of Dos Equis in their stockings Christmas morning, Mom decided it was time to tell them the truth about Santa Claus.
7. Panchito was crestfallen—instead of treats the Magi had left a dead mouse in his shoes.
8. Little did Marcella know that when she chipped her tooth on the figurine of the baby Jesus in her rosca de reyes (which tooth chip collided with the glasses of the cute guy she was chatting up, leaving a sizeable scratch, and then fell into his mulled hard cider just before he proceeded to quaff the whole thing), that she would soon be swept up in a whirlwind adventure that included (but was not limited to) a dozen talking worms with eyestalks and intricately-knitted festive clothing, a dash through eleven rooms of a collapsing all-glass house, scrubbing ten public toilets, an altercation with nine members of Anonymous (she won), eating a heaping plate of blutwurst and candied apricots in eight minutes, the seven of spades, dissecting six dead polar foxes using a shuriken, the kidnapping of all five members of New Kids on the Block (and their body doubles), a jolly fight with four men in wheelchairs (that consisted of squirting bottles of Visine at each other), three French hens, two lonely and misunderstood man-eating trees, and a madcap change of clothing with a demented Russian librettist.
9. Santa cringed as he heard the little bones of the mouse (who, as everyone knows, shouldn't have been stirring) crunch under the heels of his new Hessian boots.
10. The world reeled in horror when Santa Claus revealed his other secret identity to the world: he was the pied piper, and he'd started playing his pipe again.
11. A mere two days after Dasher started wearing bling around his neck and dangling it from his antlers, Santa had venison for dinner.
12. Janie managed to keep her OCD hidden from Kent for several months—until that fateful day when he was wrapping a Christmas present and clumsily removed a piece of tape, slightly tearing the paper, and put the tape back down again, failing to realign the shred of paper still stuck to the tape with the tear it had come from.
13. Ever since Hugh was a child he liked to drink the water out of the Christmas tree stand, but at his 2009 work Christmas party he finally learned just how socially unacceptable this was.
14. Since they knew the Fultons weren't going to give them anything for Christmas this year (just like they didn't every year), the cockroaches that lived in the hole behind the refrigerator made plans to invade the Christmas stockings as soon as they were filled.
15. Who knew there was such a thing as reindeerpox?
16. Lori tended to get stuck on certain parts of a song: "Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman, snowman…" and "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells…"
17. Santa realized that he'd forgotten his medication when the third plate of cookies began screaming for help as he ate them.
18. It was a dark and stormy night—and Blitzen seemed to get struck by the lightning more often than the other reindeer.
19. Lost to history was Santa's ill-fated attempt to replace his flying reindeer with a flying giant squid.
20. Greg became worried when the puppy he'd put in a box and wrapped—his surprise present for Jill—stopped yipping and started to smell bad.[5]
21. Every year Santa shuddered as he flew past Lovell, Maine—something dark had happened there, once, and he durst not return.
22. Santa and Mrs. Claus were both dealt a nasty surprise that night—Santa because he found out that his wife, after 1650 years of marriage, was finally pregnant and Mrs. Claus because Santa immediately passed out, struck his head on an uneven flagstone, and died of internal bleeding.
23. The Kingsley children were surpised by what they caught in their trap for Santa—a six-foot-tall hairless cat covered with a variety of obscene tatoos and which spoke with a non-rhotic accent: "Good mohning, my deah, naughty, little children."
24. When the toys discovered that Santa was a dead-beat Dad—abandoning his children all over the world with startling regularity—they got Child Protective Services involved.
25. Andrew and Lisa were both equally surprised to wake up at 3 am Christmas morning to find a new baby squalling under the Christmas tree.
26. Glinda let out a little shriek when the smallest of her nutcracker collection stepped forward and announced, "We have a list of demands."
27. Santa's life was forever altered when the world was transformed into a giant game of Whac-A-Mole—he still had to deliver presents but now every time he popped out of a chimney someone tried to bash him over the head.
28. Santa looked down remorsefully at the recently-deceased old lady lying face down in the snow—it really was time for him to lay off the alcoholic eggnog.
29. Walking over snow-laden roofs was always risky, but this year Santa had been taking extra helpings of cookies and milk, so it came as no surprise when he felt the rafters give way and he tumbled down in a shower of snow, garish Christmas lights, and splintered wood onto Jim and Carol Heiner, interrupting their…"long winter's nap".
30. Santa's hemorrhoids just weren't going away.
31. Stewart had always been a good child, so Santa wasn't sure what to do when Stewie asked for ninja rocks for Christmas.
32. Santa knew better than to walk around the North Pole by himself, but now, stuck in this crevasse, it was too late for regrets—and it was looking like he'd have to gnaw off one of his legs to get free.
33. It wasn't until after Santa made all of his Christmas deliveries that it was discovered that Kweebler, a disgruntled elf, had infested all of the Christmas stocking oranges with tapeworm eggs.

Which one do you think is the best? Or, rather, the worst?

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Notes:

[1] Its cringeworthiness notwithstanding, this line has been used in other literary works. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It was a dark and stormy night#Literary and media references.

[2] His full name and title is almost as long and rambling as his infamous sentence: Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council. He also coined the cliché "The pen is mightier than the sword." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton.

[3] See http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.

[4] We also wrote some about Hallowe'en. If you ask nicely, I might post some of those in the near future.

[5] I can see two ways to interpret this line: the puppy is dead or the puppy went to the bathroom. Neither is a pleasant proposition.

Image attributions:

Dark and Stormy Night is by Luis Argerich, available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/4587244190/.