A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

X-Mas script
Saturday, December 8, 2007
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GK:....after a message in the public interest from People United for Sensible Holidays....Christmas is three weeks away and already you can feel the power of it, a psychological tsunami hurtling our way, taking over our lives, just as it has done so often for years and years.

TR (BRITISH): My name is Charles Dickens, and I worked for years on David Copperfield — a great classic, it's ten times the book that Christmas Carol is, but A Christmas Carol I wrote in six weeks. — An old man visited by ghosts and a twerp with a crutch. People! I wrote better stuff than that.

GK: Christmas: it's a powerful holiday. It chews people up and spits them out.

TR (RUSSIAN): I wrote operas— symphonies — a great piano concerto (HE HUMS THE OPENING MOTIF) — and then — I cranked out this dopey ballet about mice and a Christmas tree and sugar plums and a Nutcracker and suddenly I'm on the map. (HE HUMS THE SUGAR PLUM MOTIF) Thousands of performances of that - why not the Symphony Pathetique?

GK: The same can happen to you if you're not careful. Christmas can be a black hole with a force all its own — you dip one toe in and it sucks you in.

TR (NY, HIGH PITCHED): My name is Irving Berlin. I never dreamed of a white Christmas — I hated snow — we always went to Miami if possible — but as a favor to a friend — they needed a song for a show, — I said, Sure, bubbeleh, you got it — I sat down at the piano and — (YIDDISH) this thing just fell out of me. I spend more time doing the Times crossword. And now — ECHHH! It's everywhere like a bad rash. Oy Gevalt!

GK: You think you're in control of Christmas and you're going to keep it small and modest, and it explodes on you. It becomes a whole career.

TR (JIMMY STEWART): My name is Jimmy Stewart and I was hoping for a career in film noir and then this role came along of the guy at the Savings & Loan and I thought it was a pretty dumb script but okay, I went along with it, and now — well gosh darn it take me back, Clarence! Take me back!

GK: You can learn from the experiences of others. Christmas is powerful. And be realistic. This thing is bigger than you think.

TR (BRIT): Has anyone ever heard of The Pickwick Papers?

GK: A message in the public interest from PUSH — People United For Sensible Holidays.