Harold's Punny Christmas Trip to the Office

Dated December 19, 2019, this is the first story that I have written in a long time. It was for the Christmas party of my section of the company of that year, and probably the last one for a while until this wretched COVID-19 pandemic gets under control. It was for the "talent contest" in which I wanted to run off as many of my Christmas puns as possible. As I was compiling them, I realized that it would be far more interesting for my unfortunate audience if I could string them together in a narrative of some sort. What you see here is the result. The tale didn't win the contest, of course, but did get lots of laughs and groans, which are always music to my ears.

It's been an eventful morning for me. I was already in trouble for telling my long-suffering wife that laundry detergent would be a great Christmas gift since it's Yuletide. Then I found a Viking helmet from a Halloween costume, put it on and told her that I was Rudolph the Red and that it was going to rain, because Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear. "Don't you have to go to work, Rudolph?" she growled.

So I went outside and saw my neighbour, who'd just finished building a new deck in his backyard. I said that he should put it on a flatbed truck so that instead of Deck the Halls, he could haul the decks, since it's the haul-idays. It looked like he was going to deck me with the two-by-four he had in his hands, so I lumbered to my car and escaped.

At the train station, some members of a local church had set up a Nativity scene to raise some funds. I said to them that since the Three Wise Men came in from the desert, the first Christmas Carol would have been "O Camel Ye Faithful". One of the Wise Men was a guy named Frank, and it looked like I'd gotten Frank incensed enough to want to myrrh-der me. That, and the pony in the display turning out to be a rather annoyed Rottweiler, convinced me to hasten to catch my train.

I got off the train in Union Station, and somewhere in the impenetrable maze was a pop-up pizza kiosk offering seasonal samples. I asked them if they had any Good King Wenceslas pizzas, you know, deep-pan, crisp, and even? If I hadn't moved fast enough, I would have gotten a slice.

Deeper into the underground Path, I encountered some people of the Hebrew persuasion at an educational display about Hanukkah's not being the "Jewish Christmas". I asked them if they thought that a naked Santa Claus would be an annoying person because he'd be a nude Nick? One of them had the nerve to say "You don't have to be a naked Santa to be a nudnick!" Threatening me with a menorah in the tuchus caused me to hasten away.

Then I went past a restaurant with a Help Wanted sign in the window. I went in and told them that they should serve Eggs Benedict on a shiny hubcap because there's no plate like chrome for the hollandaise. They threw me through a screen door so hard that I strained myself.

Then I passed by a Santa's Castle, where they were just getting set up, so I thought that I'd ask the big guy a few holiday-related questions.
"Do you get athlete's foot or mistletoe?"
"Do you weed your garden with a ho-ho-hoe?"
"Is your brand of underwear called St. Nickers?"
"If you were orange and bubbly, would you be Fanta Claus?"
"Do children who are afraid of you suffer from Claustro-phobia?"
"Is the assistant of yours who rocks out the most named Elfis Presley?"
"If your elves are grammatically correct, are they subordinate clauses?"
"Did you bring me a clock for Christmas because there's no present like the time?"
"When you tour tropical ports by ship, do you depart from the port of Santa Cruz?"
By this time, the helper elves had called Security and I had to make a run for it.

There was a little pop-up petting zoo in Nathan Phillips Square. I asked the people why the French call this season "Noel". With no Ls, how could I say "Lucky Larry, the lively llama, likes to lick large lemons loudly?" It would come out all wrong.
Did you know that llamas can spit accurately for a long distance?

Finally, I got to the lobby in the company's office tower, where I bumped into the Big Boss, who was greeting everyone who was coming in. I said to him "I'm so glad that the company motto is "Better Together". Does that mean that there will be Kahlua to go with the coffee machines? They're better together."
"No!" he replied.
"How about whiskey?"
"Security!" he said loudly.
"The elevators are this way, Mr. Reynolds," said Moose Marston, the giant security guard, propelling me in their general direction. Moose and I have known each other since high school, where exams coincided with the holidays and I called them Quizmas.

The story of my relationship with Moose, whom I had not seen for more than 30 years, is related in Moose Marston and Me.