"Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Clement C. Moore. The story's been around since 1823. Twat and self-publisher Pamela McColl of Vancouver, Canada - another Canadian embarrassment, decides to rewrite, actually not even a rewrite, decides to remove the lines "The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth. And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath." Also she added to the cover: "Edited by Santa Claus for the benefit of children of the 21st century." Then she had the audacity to put on the back sleeve, a letter from Santa announcing that "all of that old tired business of smoking" is behind him, claiming (by the way) that the reindeer can confirm his fur outerwear is faux out of respect for animals, including the polar bears of his beloved North Pole.
How cute.
If you're an idiot.
It's a pretty conceited idea but I shouldn't expect anything less from people these days. It's just a cheap way to get into the papers without doing anything substantial. How self-important can one be censoring someone else's 100 year old poetry? And that's the problem here - censorship, although Pamela probably doesn't get it.
If Pamela was half a person, how come she couldn't write her own Christmas story? Maybe one that could last 100 years? Maybe a story where people don't smoke and the unicorns play on magical see saws? I'm guessing she wouldn't want to put in any actual effort and write something herself but it must have given her great self-satisfaction bastardizing someone else's literature. And it probably costs more to buy this version than the actual story that contains all of the sentences. Real authors loathe people like her.
That's the problem with people today: doing the self-serving, "Oh, I think it's best..." without the "I" being qualified to do so. There's enough of that in politics these days and there's no reason to see it anywhere else.
On a side note, just between you and me, Santa never influenced me to smoke a pipe. If you're stupid enough to think that could actually happen, then you probably shouldn't exist - like Santa. This anti-smoking crusade's gone on so long that's not even being productive, but the real issue is the defacing of other people's property and being proud about making a buck off of it.
I got a pretty good idea why the book was self-published. What major publisher in their right minds would publish this? I read where she said that she was called every name in the book. I believe it. Her next venture will be her finding "the book" and omitting all the bad words. It will make her feel better and just.
Here's an idea you can use, Pam, since God knows you can't come up with you're own: remove the lines and not advertise it. It's much more effective since, over time, that would be the only version kids would know and they wouldn't know any different.
The easiest thing to do is not buy The Night Before Censorship based on its irrelevance. I was going to say "just burn the book" but I don't want to give Ms McColl any other oppressive ideas.
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