The Nightmare Before Christmas
(title flagrantly stolen from Tim Burton’s imagination)
This is installment #7 of my several-part series, Shit I Wrote a While Ago. This particular story is written on paper attached to a foot-long cartoon pig, and since the subject matter heavily features the characters from Charlotte’s Web, I can only assume that we were doing some sort of second grade unit on the book. From 1993.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
One cold Christmas Eve, a pig named Wilbur was working in an office pen called PPR (ed. note: my dad has worked for a company called PPG for as long as I’ve been alive; I can only assume PPR is some animal variation of this glass-making corporation). He was a writer in the pen. The president was Templeton.
Whenever it was Wilbur’s pay day, Templeton would say, “The food is mine! I have six little rats to take care of!”
“You do not,” Wilbur protested. “You’re an old geezer and you know it! I have those little spiders to take care of.”
“Not on your life will I share my food with you!”
That night a ghost appeared beside Templeton’s bed.
“Who are you?” Templeton asked.
“I am the ghost of Christmas Past,” said the ghost. “I am here to show you the past of Christmas.”
“Well OK,” Templeton said.
When they got to a little house, they saw an old sheep dancing with a goose.
“Looks like fun,” said the ghost (she was a spider).
“It does,” Templeton said. “Where was I?” he asked.
“You were at the treat table stuffing yourself silly,” said the ghost.
But Templeton didn’t hear. He was still gaping in through the frost bitten window at the dancers.
When he turned around, he saw a thick red velvet drape in front of him. “Must have been a dream,” he thought.
Then he heard a noise. Templeton pushed open the bed drapes. There sat a giant in a green robe. He was on a pile of food.
“Heaven!” screamed Templeton.
But just as he jumped for the food, the giant put out his hand to stop him.
“I am the ghost of Christmas Present. Tonight you will come with me.”
When they got to a small house, they stopped. In the house there was a pig and three little spiders. The spiders’ names were Joy, Ariana, and Nellie. Nellie was crippled so she had crutches. The pig was Wilbur. All four were sad because they didn’t have anything to eat.
“What is wrong with Nellie?” he asked.
“She is crippled,” said the ghost.
As he was about to ask what would happen to Nellie, Templeton saw a hooded figure. “Hello,” he said.
The figure said nothing.
“What will happen to Nellie?” he asked.
The figure said nothing, but pointed to a grave that said: HERE LIES NELLIE
“Oh no!” cried Templeton. Then he saw a grave that said: TEMPLETON
“Eek!” he squeaked. The figure pushed him in the grave.
Templeton was struggling, but before he knew it, he was back in his bed. It was Christmas morning. He hurried out of the house and went to Wilbur’s house. He brought food with him and gave it to Wilbur, Joy, Ariana, and Nellie.
I have not seen such blatant plagiarism perhaps ever in my life, as this entire story is a scene-for-scene copy (with slightly worse dialogue) of the Disney version of A Christmas Carol, with Templeton substituting for Scrooge MacDuck and Wilbur for Mickey Mouse. The only thing I neglected to include was the Jacob Marley ghost, but that’s probably only because I couldn’t think of anyone who could even approach Goofy’s mastery of that role. Now, normally when someone does something so base as swiping an entire plotline from someone else, I’m inclined to fail them (so are my teachers), but A Christmas Carol has been done and redone at least 45 dozen times, and this is, if nothing else, a pretty fucking faithful representation. Also the dialogue about Nellie being crippled is clearly Faulkneresque in its brilliance, so I will give this story a C
