GK: Christmas is a time when opposites are brought together. You have the elevated aspect of Christmas.
(ORGAN)
TR (JOWLY, ANGLICAN): As it says in Scripture, Behold Him. ----- Behold. ---- Be and----- hold. To be, or exist ---- and to hold, or to have. That which we are and that which we possess. Brought together as one. Behold.
GK: And then there is the low carnal aspect.
(DOGS) (BEERY PEASANT GRUMBLES AND MUTTERING)
TR: More beer for me dogs! And slice me off a big hunk of that beef and put it on me truncheon.
SS: Aaaaaaaaaoooooooooowwwww. Don't you order me around, you brute----
FN: Bring us a pint of ale, you saucy wench!
SS: Don't you wench me, you filthy (SLAP) ---- there. That's what you got coming to you!
FN (LOW GROWLING INCOMPREHENSIBLE VOICE)
TR: Speak up, man. Don't mumble.
SS: And get those filthy dogs down off of my table!
TR: These dogs ain't no filthier than I am! Haw haw haw haw haw! Are you? (DOGS)
GK: For me, Christmas begins with my annual Christmas cold. Every year I get sick and I'm congested (SFX) and have a hacking cough (SFX) that sounds like I have tuberculosis (SFX) and Dr. Ouspenskaya comes
TR (RUSSIAN, OLD, DEEP VOICE): There is a deathly pallor, and your eyes are dark, your skin is clammy. I believe you will die before morning.
GK: And I don't die and that makes me feel better and by Christmas I'm happy. It's called establishing a baseline. What makes you happy is to feel better than you did before. And that's why we live in Minnesota. (BLIZZARD, WOLF) The blizzard hits, we can't go anywhere. (WHEELS SPINNING ON ICE), the car is stuck, it's ten below zero (WHEELS SPINNING, HIGHER PITCH), the furnace goes out.
(CRUNCHING WOOD)
SS: What are you doing??????
(CHAINSAW)
TR: I'M CUTTING UP THE DINING ROOM TABLE FOR FIREWOOD!!!
GK: Here in Minnesota, adversity exhilarates us. Depression is our inspiration. We used to have a dog who every year ate the fruitcake.
(DOG SNARLING, WOLFING FRUITCAKE)
SS: NO!!!! NO!!!! Oh no. ......Oh dear.
TR: What happened?
SS: Rex ate the fruitcake. The fruitcake Aunt Joan sent us.
TR: Oh. Oh dear.
GK: It was too bad, but somehow it made us feel better. It made the dog sick (SFX) but it made us feel better. Odd, but true. The one year we went to Hawai'i for Christmas (SURF, GULLS), it was beautiful. And it was depressing. (SURF, BIRDS, CONTINUE)
SS: It's beautiful.
TR: Right.
SS: Sand and sea. Blue sky. It's like a picture.
TR: Right.
SS: A beautiful picture.
TR: You want to go for a walk?
SS: No.
TR: Neither do I.
SS: I wonder what they're doing back in St. Paul.
TR: They got ten inches of snow last night.
SS: Really.
TR: Yeah.
SS: Remember when we flew home from Florida that time?
Flew into a winter storm---- the plane was rocking---- ground was white----- we landed in blowing snow----- got off in our T-shirts and it was bitter cold----
TR: It was wonderful.
SS: Let's go.
TR: Now?
SS: Let's go.
TR: But we still have a week left on the rental----you're right.
Let's go.
(BRIDGE)
GK: This is a basic fact of human nature. The Cratchits were happier when they were poor and in Dickens's sequel to A Christmas Carol, called Cratchit & Sons, they had to endure prosperity.
TR (CRATCHIT): Well, Mrs Cratchit, that is a nice fine goose you've cooked. And that pudding ----- my, you have outdone yourself, my love.
SS (MRS CRATCHIT): Tell Tiny Tim to get his feet off the table.
FN (TEEN): Oh, go take a pill. Get off my back. I hate you both.
TR: You're not so tiny anymore, Tim. And why do you keep hauling that little crutch around? You can walk now. That operation made you all better.
SS: Your father's right, dear.
FN (TEEN): Leave me alone.
TR: Used to be good as gold, you did. And now you're a royal pain in the wazoo, Tiny Tim.
FN (TEEN): Oh, go stuff it in your ear.
SS: What happened to us Cratchits? We were happier when Mr. Scrooge was a skinflint, we were. We were happier when life was harder for us.
GK: And there is the irony. We were happier when we weren't so happy. Herman Melville wrote a sequel to Moby Dick called Go Be Quick in which Ishmael has rescued Ahab from the whale and they are wealthy from the royalties from their memoirs and live on Beacon Hill in Boston.
TR (AHAB): I had a dream last night, I was on the Pequod and we were going after a polar bear.
FN: I miss those days. (WALKING WITH PEG LEG)
TR (AHAB): I do too, Ish, and if it wasn't for having to look after the mansion and look after my stock portfolio, I'd be tempted to go to sea.
FN: You were a good captain, Habby. And your first mate, Starbucks.
TR (AHAB): Went into the coffee business, he did.
FN: Rich and miserable, just like us.
(STING)
GK: I remember when Scott Fitzgerald and I took the train home from Princeton..... (TRAIN WHISTLE) We got off at the Union depot in St. Paul, waiting for my parents to come pick us up in their Model T and take us up the hill to our houses. He lived on Summit, I lived on Laurel.
TR: You get invited to the Ordways' Christmas party?
GK: Me?
TR: Did you?
GK: Are you kidding?
TR: I thought you knew the Ordways.
GK: I used to shovel their walk.
TR: Oh. So what will you do for Christmas?
GK: Same thing I always do. Be borne back ceaselessly into the past like boats against the current while I stare at that green light at the end of the block.
TR: Interesting. Well, I am going to work on my novel, This Side of Paradise, and it'll be enormously successful and I'll marry Zelda and we'll go live in New York and be happy, happy, happy.
GK: I hope not.
TR: Why not?
GK: It'll ruin you, Scott. Stay in St. Paul and get a good steady job in radio.
TR: Radio?
GK: It's coming in. It's going to be big. Enormous. There'll be jobs for young men like you and me, jobs with health benefits. Pension plans.
TR: Awwwwwww ----- not for me. I want to be rich. And famous. And go to Paris and hang out with Hemingway.
GK: You're a Minnesotan, Scott. Success can only make you unhappy.
TR: Well, we'll see about that. (BRIDGE)
GK: And so we did. And that's why we build an Ice Palace every year in St. Paul. (CROWD, GASPS, EXCLAMATIONS OF WONDER) It covers ten acres up by the Capitol and it's twenty stories high and it's vast inside, so you go in ---- (REVERB, ECHOING FOOTSTEPS)
FN: Hello???? (HE SHIVERS) Is anyone here???? Can anybody hear me???? Help!!!! Help!!!!
GK: And you feel like you're going to die. And then they send in a dog and you don't. (DOG PANTING, WOOFS, REVERB) That's what makes Christmas Christmas. You feel bad and then you don't anymore.
Merry Christmas, everybody. If you don't have your Christmas cold yet, come see me after the show. Merry Christmas, Cratchits.
TR (CRATCHIT): Yes, sir. Merry Christmas. (ASIDE) Say Merry Christmas, Tiny Tim. C'mon, say it.
FN (TEEN): Leave me alone.
TR (CRATCHIT): Say it, you little twit, or I'll smack you one wi' your crutch.
FN (TEEN): Merry Christmas. There. Happy?
GK: Merry Christmas, doctor.
TR (RUSSIAN): You must rest. Stay here in your bed. Let me draw the drapes. You must not exert yourself. Your heart is too weak.
GK: Nonsense. The heart is powerful. Especially at Christmas. Merry Christmas to the band.
(ANGELS)