ALL:
I'll have a blue Christmas without you
Ill be so blue just thinking about you
You'll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white,
But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas
SS (ADENOIDAL CHILD): Hi Santa.
TR: (TIRED SANTA) Hi, kid.
SS (CHILD): What's wrong, Santa? You don't look happy.
TR (SANTA): I'm worn out, kid. Been listening for two weeks
to what everybody wants for Christmas. It wears you down.
People want a lot of stuff. I only got one sleigh. Right? I'm not a
magician.
SS (CHILD): So what do you want, Santa?
TR (SANTA): Me? Ha. Want to get out of these red velvet pants
and into a pair of shorts and work out and get rid of this big
bowl full of jelly.
SS (CHILD): Does it really shake when you laugh?
TR (SANTA): Do I look like I'm laughing?
SS (CHILD): No, Santa.
TR (SANTA): Ever been to the North Pole?
SS: No but I've been to Maine.
TR (SANTA): Entirely different. Mrs. Claus told me she'd leave
me if we didn't move south, so we picked up and moved to the
South Pole. Just as bad there. Worse. Anyway, there were these
two penguins standing on an ice floe and one penguin looked at
the other penguin.....
SS: I already heard that joke, Santa.
TR: "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo?"
SS: I've heard it.
TR: Okay. Sorry.
BAND BREAK
CD: Whose name did you draw for Christmas?
GK: Your sister Sierra. I didn't think she celebrated Christmas.
CD: She celebrates solstice.
GK: Maybe I'll buy her a log.
CD: But we have to drive all the way up to Vermont.
GK: Right. Well, I'll get her some tea. A Celtic tea.
CD: Are you sure you really want to spend Christmas with my
family? A whole week of it?
GK: Of course, I do.
CD: Because if you don't, it's okay. I can tell them that
something came up.
GK: It sounds like you don't want me to come.
CD: I don't want you to go up there and be miserable for a
week.
GK: Just because they're all vegans and weave their own
clothing out of flax and milkweeds and the house is full of
animals and they like to chant and stuff ---- I'm fine with that.
CD: I know you don't like them.
GK: I do. I'm just sort of quiet around them.
CD: My family is weird. I know that. They live in the woods
and they obsess about organic food
GK: And I want to go with you.
CD: And make fun of them. Roll your eyes. Grit your teeth.
GK: If you'd rather I didn't come. Fine. I won't.
CD: I know my family is weird. They used to read The Hobbit
aloud every night. Over and over. But that doesn't mean I don't
love them.
GK: I wasn't suggesting that.
CD: You want me to --- what?--- turn my back on my own flesh
and blood----
GK: No. Of course not.
CD: What are they? Just garbage? To be dumped by the side of
the road?
GK: Honey----
CD: Don't touch me. I'm going to Vermont. You go do
whatever you want to do. Go to a Christmas movie. Order takeout.
GK: Please. If I don't go to Vermont with you, my life will be
over. I will go over to Newark and wait for a freight train and I
will climb into an empty box car and wherever it goes, that will
be my fate. If it heads south, I may survive, and if it heads west
and north, then I'll die out there in the night somewhere and
they'll find my frozen body wrapped in cardboard and you'll
never see me or hear from me again. Ever. --- What is it?
CD: I know what you can get my sister---- a scarf. A cotton
scarf. She loves scarves. She'd be so happy.
GK: You think so?
CD: I saw some in a shop in Chelsea. Let's go find it and then
let's have supper.
GK: You mean it?
CD: Of course I mean it.
(BAND BREAK)
FN: Sweetheart?
SS: Yes---?
FN: I can't read your handwriting on this shopping list --- does
this say saffron?
SS: Yes.
FN: Saffron?? For the turkey?
SS: What's wrong?
FN: You're not going to try to do that Thai turkey again that you
did two years ago are you? The one where you marinate things
for 48 hours and put spices in cheesecloth and you boil up two
pounds of chubs and sprats and skim the fat off with a redactor
and boil it down in a chafing dish? That turkey? Honey, please-
-- Just let Christmas be Christmas--- turkey, potatoes, cranberry
-- please, Karen. For me. Please.
SS: I want Christmas to be special. I don't want to just dump a
bunch of grub in the feed trough.
FN: (SIGHS)
SS: I want to cook.
FN: And you want a twenty-pound turkey?? How many guests
are we having, Karen?
SS: Nine.
FN: NINE!!!???
SS: Yes. Nine.
FN: Nine--- why?
SS: Christmas is a time when we open up our homes to the
needy, to the lonely and less fortunate.
FN: Oh boy. That's means Clarissa, doesn't it.
SS: Yes, Clarissa is coming.
FN: Clarissa. I knew it. And the Deadlies.
SS: Their name is Dudley.
FN: You've invited the Deadlies. Those boring whimpering
weepy little people ---
SS: The Dudleys are members of our church, Walter.
FN: They're no fun. They come to dinner and sit there with their
big watery eyes and they cast their gloomy looks around the
room and they want to talk about some grim story they read in
the paper about pestilence and disease.
SS: It means so much to them that somebody cares to invite
them for Christmas.
FN: It means so much to them to be able to share their misery
with us.
SS: Well, I've already invited them. And Clarissa. And I've
invited Frances Fisher.
FN: We're going to have to sit and eat a turkey dinner in front of
an animal rights fanatic?
SS: I happen to respect her beliefs---
FN: She's going to sit there and watch us pile the white meat on
our plates and then just as we're lifting the fork to our mouths,
she'll mention this interesting article she read about how turkeys
are butchered using piano wire.
SS: Well, it's only once a year.
FN: (SIGHS)
BAND BREAK
TR: Look ---- it's the annual Christmas letter from my sister-inlaw
all about their good works and the exploits of their children.
Listen----- "Tanya made Dean's list again and is the leading
scorer on the basketball team and won the lead role in the
college production of "Antigone," which they are performing in
the original Greek. Her junior essay on chaos theory will be in
the next issue of Scientific American, the same week she'll
appear as a model in Vogue. We are still in a daze over that
MacArthur grant she won ---- they say she's the youngest
recipient ever." Boy, doesn't that warm your heart. Let's not
invite them over this year.
BAND BREAK
GK: Did you see this card? Where did this come from?
CD: Who's it from?
GK: No idea. Listen to this---- "May this joyous season be a
time when the fragment that is me touches the fragment of you
and we become a wholeness of shared essence and realize the
truth of Christmas which is that we are not merely ourselves, we
are each other." Who write this sort of garbage?
CD: That's my mother's card.
GK: Oh.
CD: My 72-year-old mother.
GK: It's beautiful. I like it.
CD: You think it's weird.
GK: No.
CD: Well, they are weird, but they're still my family.
GK: I love them.
CD: I wish you would avoid any comment on my family
whatsoever, okay?
GK: Okay. (DOORBELL) Who's that?
CD: It's the UPS man with the scarf I ordered for you to give
my sister.
GK: Oh.
(BAND BREAK)
(BEEP)
SS (MOM): Hi, honey. It's me. Mom. Just wondering if you
were going to call, that's all. Don't worry. Probably you got busy
with your friends. I'm fine. Just sitting here by the phone,
looking at the lights on the tree and the presents. Two of them. I
bought them for myself. So call if you get a chance, and don't
worry--- I'll be up late. Probably all night. Bye now.
(BEEP)
FN: Yeah. Listen. Karen is making that Thai turkey that she
tried a few years ago ---- remember that one? Well, I tried to
head her off but she's gotta do it so I'm going to bring about ten
pounds of Kentucky Fried. What do you say?
(BEEP)
CD: Oh hi. It's just me. Listen--- we're not going to Vermont
anyway, okay? They're all down with the flu and it sounds
pretty gross and the dogs are sick and everybody's out in the
woods hanging onto trees, if you know what I mean. So how
about we go to your parents' in Key West? Is that okay? We
can use mileage.
(BEEP)
TR: Yeah. I was doing my meditation today and then my guru
called and she'd done my chart and she said that this would be a
good time to avoid stress and she said something about people in
my life obsessing over little details to the extent that the whole
point of the thing is lost and I just decided that I'd go up to the
retreat center ---- some people from my group will be there -----
so I'll see you in a week or so. Take care. Happy holiday.
ALL:
I'll have a blue Christmas without you
Ill be so blue just thinking about you
You'll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white,
But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas