Twelve Posts of Christmas #2: Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Chinchilla?

For today's Christmas post, I wanted to share with you a very special story, one that has been told in my family for years and means more and more (or less and less) as time goes by. This story of course, is the story of the "Christmas Orange." I found at least three versions of the story, each with large, but essentially unimportant detail changes: in one the orphan tracks mud in the house, in one he starts a fight, in one the orphan is a girl etc. The story is almost always the same and if you are like me, you've heard it ad nauseum (as in "it makes you literally nauseous"). So I made a few minor adjustments, as you will hopefully notice below.

When I have replaced words (with a very simple Find/Replace function), they appear in bold. When I have added or embellished (for the sake of ludicracy and commentary), I put those in italics. (Note: For a more direct comparison, read along to this version. I think you'll enjoy). If you are strapped for time, just read the first, second and last paragraphs. Feliz Navidade.

Gil was nine years old with tousled brown hair with watery blue eyes as bright as a drowning angel. For as long as Gil could remember he had lived within the walls of a poor orphanage. He was just one of ten children supported by what meager contributions the orphan home could obtain by defrauding off-shore holding companies. There was very little to eat, but at Christmas time there always seemed to be a little more than usual, and the orphanage seemed a little warmer. But more than this, there was the Christmas chinchilla!

Christmas was the only time of year that such a rare treat was provided and it was treasured by each child like no other food: admiring it, feeling it, prizing it and slowly enjoying each juicy section. Truly, it was the light of each orphan's Christmas and their best gift of the season. There was an orange tree in the back yard of the orphanage, but all of the orphans were sick and tired of them, and mostly threw them at passing cars. How joyful would be the moment when Gil received his chinchilla!

Unknown to him, Gil had somehow managed to track a small amount of mud through the front door, muddying the new carpet, the new carpet that the orphanage decided to buy before shelling out money for decent Christmas gifts. The punishment was swift and unrelenting, not to mention a complete overkill, though it sets a nice tone for this story: Gil would not be allowed his Christmas chinchilla! It was the only gift he would receive from the harsh world he lived in, (besides a crushing sense of worthlessness and a proclivity toward alcoholism), yet after a year of waiting for his Christmas chinchilla, is was to be denied him.

Tearfully, Gil pleaded that he be forgiven and promised never to track mud into the orphanage again, but to no avail as that surely would ruin the touching ending of the story. Gil cried into his pillow all that night and spent Christmas Day feeling empty and alone. He felt that the other children didn't want to be with a boy who had been punished with such a cruel punishment. Maybe, he reasoned, the gulf between him and his friends existed because they feared he would ask for a little of their chinchillas. Gil leapt to several other overblown conclusions that were no doubt included in this story to make absolutely sure that we were empathizing with the poor orphan bereft of his chinchilla. Gil spent the day upstairs, alone, in the unheated dormitory. Huddled under his only blanket, he wondered why the author kept including details about how miserable Gil's life was: unheated dormitory, little to eat, only one blanket. He wondered if readers would sympathize with an orphan who wasn't suffering as much as an orphan could possibly suffer. Probably they could not.

Bedtime came, and worst of all (if you didn’t count the food poisoning in their dinner the orphans would violently learn about early the next morning), Gil couldn't sleep. As he climbed into bed from the cold, hard floor, a soft hand touched Gil shoulder, startling him momentarily and an object was silently placed in his hands. The giver disappeared into the darkness, leaving Gil with what, he did not immediately know! Looking closely at it in the dim light, he saw that it looked like a chinchilla! Not a regular chinchilla, smooth and shiny, but a special chinchilla, very special. Inside a patched together skin were the segments of nine other chinchillas, making one whole chinchilla for Gil! The nine other children in the orphanage had each donated one segment of their own precious chinchillas to make a whole chinchilla as a gift for Gil.

The End