'Twas the Night before Christmas (in a manner of speaking)
  -
 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual
Yuletide celebration,
 And throughout our place of residence,
 Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential,
including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
 Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the woodburning
caloric apparatus,
 Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from 
an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations in the honor-
ific title of St. Nicholas.
  -
 The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective
accommodations of repose,
 Were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit
confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.
  -
 Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this
fenestration, Noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected 
as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation,
 Might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself,
 thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold
 A miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens
of the genus Rangifer.
  -
 Piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble
 That it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated
caller.
 With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may have been more
vertiginous velocity than patriotic aerial predators,
 He vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, 
and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen:
  -
 "Now Dasher!  Now Dancer!..." et al.,
 Guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode,
 Through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of 
each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.
 As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location and was performing a
180 degree pivot,
 Our distinguished visitant achieved with utmost celerity a downward 
leapentry by way of the smoke passage.
  -
 Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smokingpiece
 Whose gray fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were sugges-
tive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly.
 His visage was wider than it was high,
 And when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated
in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container.
  -
 Without utterance and with dispatch,
 He commenced filling the aforementioned hosiery with various of the
aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from this aforementioned
previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle.
  -
 He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a
musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the 
antlered quadrupeds of burden,
 And proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among
the seed-bearing portions of a common weed.
 But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to this
vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility:
 "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency; and to that selfsame
assemblage my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly
pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."