It’s Christmas morning and even the chimney sweeps are sleeping late. It snowed last night and a boy makes the first footprints past the home of Ebenezer Scrooge. Up above, the old miser opens the shutters and throws up the sash and shouts down, “You there, boy what day is this?”
“Today? Why it’s Christmas Day.”
“It's Christmas Day?” Ebenezer yells.
“Sure is.”
“I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can.” The boy starts to walk away when Ebenezer asks, “Do you know the poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the corner?”
“I should hope I did,” the boy answers without actually committing himself to the answer.
“An intelligent boy!” Scrooge yells. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there?”
The boy tells Ebenezer that the prize turkey is as big as himself and hanging there now. Pleased, Ebenezer asks the boy to go and buy it for him.
There have been a lot of versions of A Christmas Carol, from Alastair Sim to Michael Caine to George C Scott to Mr. Magoo as Ebenezer Scrooge. The adaptations that stick close to the original Dickens text includes a brief business proposal between Scrooge and the boy, insuring that the turkey job gets done (“Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown.”) This way, the boy doesn’t just run off with Scrooge’s money and go buy himself a bicycle with one giant wheel.
Other versions of the timeless classic cut this exchange to its basics and Ebenezer just sends the honest boy off to arrange an anonymous turkey delivery to the Cratchit home. While Scrooge goes on a spending spree for toys to give the children of his long-suffering bookkeeper, the boy on the street has to go deal with a skeptical poulterer.
Outside the shop, at the next street but one at the corner, the boy does his best…
“Listen here, Gov-nuh,” the boy patiently explains to the poulterer he just woke up, “the most famously stingy miser in all of Lon-don told me to tell you to take the biggest turkey you’ve got, drag it to the poor part of town and drop it off at the Cratchit house. Then, bill it to Ebenezer Scrooge because he’s gonna pick up the tab. He’d come himself but he’s running around in a sort-of part sleepwear part Victorian formal wardrobe. It’s like, he’s got a dressing gown but with a top hat and scarf… maybe a cane.”
The poulterer, a reasonable man who is obliging to reasonable requests, remains unconvinced. The boy continues.
“So, while he’s buying a giant doll house and such it’s up to me to tell you to take Birdzilla there, strap him to a sled, and drop him ANNONYMOUSLY at the home of the Cratchits.”
“And just how’d I do that a-nonny-mousely?” the poulterer asks.
“I dono, just knock on the door and then hide. Or, hand off the turkey and while she’s saying ‘But there must be some kind of mistake.’ Just tip your cap and get all cheerio then say, ‘No mistake at OLL, mum. Mawy Cwistmass!’ and slip out while her six impoverished children are all talking at once. Then, you come back to your shop and just trust that you’ll get paid by an infamously tight-fisted skinflint who may or may not have had a stroke last night.”
The poulterer, instead of running into the store and snatching up the unwieldy turkey then hauling-ass to Camden Town, remains standing in the door of his shop and folds his arms.
“Look at it this way,” the boy persists, “it’s CHRISTMAS MORNING and you haven’t unloaded your ginormous, prize winning turkey. No one else is buying turkey this late in the game. And, if no one’s bought your cartoonishly large bird yet they’re just not going to. Your only hope to sell at this late hour is for a plucky match boy in fingerless gloves to act as a liaison for a counting-house bastard who had an overnight personality change and hire you to cheerfully and clandestinely deliver that turkey in the window to a woman who, up until now, is prepping to serve a teeny tiny little bird to a family of eight.”
Always interested in poultry preparation, the poulterer inquires just what kind of tiny bird Mrs. Cratchit is preparing for Christmas dinner.
“I dono, something real small. Maybe a Cornish game hen?”
“Might be squab,” the poulterer suggests, “it’d be more pathetic that way.”
“What’s squab?”
“It’s pigeon.”
“Oh, Christ, that’s gross. Yeah, it’s squab. I’m sure that without the intervention of you and me and that gone-goofy Ebenezer Scrooge the Cratchit family will be snapping the wishbone of whatever Trafalgar Square pigeon they managed to catch with a dirty pillowcase.”
Though his father and grandfathers had all been lamplighters, the poulterer broke from his family profession and became a poulterer because of his love of quality poultry. And this tale of the Cratchit family’s substandard bird hits the poulterer right in the heart. And besides, the prize turkey is probably going to spoil if he doesn’t sell it soon. He warms to the proposal and asks the boy, “Will the Cratchit woman sign for delivery?”
“Don’t ask for her to sign for it! This operation is: go in, give the turkey, “Mawy Cwistmass,” and you’re out like a ninja. And don’t ask me to sign for it either. I’m a street urchin. I’m probably illiterate.”
The poulterer nods slowly, squares his shoulders, and takes a long look at the magnificent turkey, plucked and ready for the flames of a Christmas cook-fire.
“Stop stalling!” the boy wails, “At twenty minutes a pound Mrs. Cratchit isn’t even going to have this monstrosity cooked until some time after dark. Her kids are still going to have to eat their hyperbolically small bird just for something to munch on during the ten plus hours it’ll take to roast the salmonella out of that beast.”
It was inarguable poultry logic and the poulterer quickened his pace. He was better than his word and delivered the prize-winning turkey to the Cratchit family, never mentioning the name of their mysterious benefactor, Ebenezer Scrooge.
And the boy, smaller than the prize turkey, continued on to his original destination before having been waylaid by the requests of the much-changed Scrooge. He was making his way to painted ladies of Whitechapel, to try to score a Christmas freebie.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!
