To all my Jonny Pals, Thanks for stopping by this, the 23rd annual installment of the Jonny Christmas Extravaganza. This year's edition has been one that I'm thinking about doing for a few years now, and those of you who first became familiar with the character of the indomitable Jonny M. from the gross-out humor of the early, truly disgusting installments like the immortal Jonny's Prison Christmas may be surprised to discover a kinder and gentler Jonny this time out. He'll still gross you out; he'll just be kinder and gentler while doing it. And there are the usual ads for Jonny products that you love so much, as well as Jonny games and the second annual Jonny Christmas message. I hope this more romantic version of the muse is to your liking and, whether you agree with the story's point of view or not, I thank those of you who have made these idiotic stories a part of your holiday tradition for lo these past two decades. For those of you getting your first dose of the saga of Jonny M., I suggest you hold on and enjoy the ride. Your Yuletide is about to get a little blue. Happy Holidays,

Special thanks to Amy Ball.

Hover your cursor over underlined text for an explanation of its meaning.

Once upon a time, there was a tiny village at the very tip-top of the world. It was a thriving place that existed for only one purpose, to reward all the good boys and girls on the planet for being the special treasures that they are by providing them all that their hearts desired on the most magical day of the year. For that unique community’s address was the North Pole, and its citizens were the little green elves who built the toys that would be delivered on Christmas Eve by the one-and-only Santa Claus.

Everyone who lived there hated the dump. Oh, it was fine for the elves, who managed to fly under the radar of every special interest that funded their operations because of the carefully-cultivated perception that the elves’ job required a certain…artistic…type to create such fun and flamboyant playthings. But Santa himself was under constant scrutiny to be sure that he didn’t represent any unwholesome values, since most of the money that paid for Christmas came from the ultra-conservative Senate Committee on Holiday Appropriations and Women’s Health Issues (countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia and Tibet being strangely reticent to contributing any money towards Christmas). That was a problem, because while Santa was the most moral, compassionate and generous of souls who always came out smelling like a rose whenever the committee’s chairman Rick Santorum sent private detectives to the North Pole to sniff around for any trace of scandal, he was really a man with a secret. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Saint Nick had for decades been in a committed, loving and monogamous same-sex relationship with The Tooth Fairy.

Santa and The Tooth Fairy’s love affair was well known within the safe confines of the North Pole, where the elves happily spent their Saturday nights trolling bath houses, gay bars and 24 Hour Fitnesses for companions of the same gender. But Santa was forced to pay a mint to the advertising agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to keep his partnership from the public; especially the intolerant red states. The agency deflected any suspicions about Saint Nick’s sexual orientation by inventing a fictional Mrs. Claus and subtly placing her in the odd Norelco and Coca-Cola ads that saturated the media when Santa was at his most visible. No one gave much thought to the nebulous Mr. Claus; she might be depicted as a matronly woman in her 70’s or a young hottie in her 20’s, she might be an old-world European or a liberated and free-thinking American, she might be attired in a dowdy frock or one of those awesome red miniskirts with the white fringe that is one of the main reasons that December is the best month of the year. As long as Santa was depicted as having a “normal” relationship with a woman, no one asked any questions. Christmas went on without a hitch and Kris Kringle was able to carry on his frustrating, closeted life-partnership with the Tooth Fairy without any pressure from outside – or with any acknowledgement of its substance. Until one day when Santa received a phone call from the ad agency.

Santa and The Tooth Fairy kept their relationship a secret by hiring an ad agency to invent a "Mrs. Claus."

“We’ve got big problems,” said Don Draper, the smooth ad man who had been expertly handling Santa’s business. “In the past, the Republicans who gave you most of your funding were content with a Christmas Card from you and ‘Mrs. Claus.’ But they’re really putting the screws on after Romney lost the election so this year the Senate committee wants to meet her to make sure you’re the type of people they should be funding.”

“That’s no problem,” answered Santa as The Tooth Fairy - warmly referred to as “Cuddles” by everyone at the North Pole - wrestled with the knot in Saint Nick’s left shoulder where he stored his tension. “Just set up some casting calls on the coast for a new Mrs. Claus. She and I will do some face time in Washington and they’ll be so charmed that they’ll double our budget. See if the actress who did the print ads last year for Hershey’s Kisses is available. Cuddles said that red and green really set off her eyes.”

“You don’t understand,” said Draper as he downed a shot glass of Jack Daniels. “The committee wants to meet her at the North Pole to make sure that you two are ‘normal’ enough in your natural habitat. And they want to do it on Christmas Week itself.”

That was a problem. They had tried to set up a Mrs. Claus at the North Pole before, but the place was so freezing cold that only elves (whose green skin gave them particularly rough hides, which came in handy when they were bottoms at Wednesday night spanking parties) and the hairiest of men could survive there. Even when they tried to cast Mrs. Claus out of a Russian Bride catalogue with a burly woman from Siberia, she demanded to be delivered back to Kazakhstan when she stepped off the plane and an icy gust of wind froze her mustache off. There was no way that they could possibly get a woman to agree to live at the North Pole. And getting one of the elves to play the part was out of the question. Almost every elf was so committed to the flamboyant lifestyles that they led at Santa’s Village that they could never pass as heterosexual, and the few straight elves led frustrating, closeted existences, afraid to even admit to their true sexuality out of fear of being shunned by the community.

“All we would need is for one of the Republicans to say that he’s a tea partier,” said the Tooth Fairy. “The jig would be up as soon as an elf broke out his teabags and tried to use the senator's nose as a balance beam.”

“We’ll have to think outside the box,” replied Draper. “And I’ve never meant that more literally. We’ll need to find a man to pose as Mrs. Claus. He’ll need to dress as a woman, look like a woman and behave as a woman while the Republicans are visiting. Only then will they believe our ruse.”

"Well don't look at me," countered the Tooth Fairy. "As soon as they noticed my wings poking out of a backless evening gown, our cover would be blown."

“The kind of men who can survive at the North Pole could never pass as a woman," moaned Santa. "As soon as one of the Republicans had one too-many eggnogs at a Christmas party and grabbed ahold of one of Mrs. Claus’ hooters, the game would be up.”

“Then we have only one option,” replied Draper. “We’ll need to find a man who is so sexually unappealing that the last thing anyone will want to do is think of him in sexual terms. When we get him in a wig and a dress, the Senate committee members will be so physically disgusted by him that even the notion of him in an erotic situation would make them sick to their stomachs. That way, we can depict you in a nice, normal heterosexual marriage without sullying it with sex. In fact, that you’re in a sexless heterosexual marriage gives it even more credibility! I’ve done it again! Our only problem is, who are we going to find who’s so physically revolting that he’ll be sexually repellent to both men and women?

At about this time, a young muse named Jonny M. was returning to the United States from a Parisian vacation. The muse was usually employed at some demeaning hell-hole of a job at this time of year, but he did the math and realized that since he was always got fired from whatever gig he was working at right around this spot on the calendar as a jumping-off point for the idiotic story that would inevitably unfold, he might as well take a trip instead. As soon as his plane touched down and he made it through some sticky moments in U.S. customs when he couldn’t get through a metal detector because of a corkscrew in his small intestine (which had been inserted there by a French waiter after a misunderstanding over the bill at a Parisian café), he grabbed a cab back to his revolting hovel to see his beloved Pug Winston (who was introduced to the readers of these moronic stories in last year’s Jonny’s Animal Shelter Christmas). Fortunately, the customs agents had been able to remove the corkscrew from Jonny’s anus so that he was able to open the bottle of French wine he was smuggling in through his large intestine, allowing him to get wasted enough on the cab ride home to be able to hallucinate having a conversation with the Pug when he entered the door.

“How’s it hanging, Winston?” slurred the muse as he held the Pug in his arms. “Oh…I forgot that you had a medical procedure to make that question irrelevant. Did I miss anything while I was gone?”

“Nothing to speak of,” responded Winston as he tried to squirm away to escape the foul stench of Jonny’s breath. “I knew that you’d want to get to work right away on whatever idiotic job you’d have to set the theme of this stupid story, so I bookmarked a few likely openings. I thought this once had the most promise.”

With that, the Pug clicked on the computer and opened the browser to this ad on Craigslist:

Jonny was intrigued. As a rule, he favored men’s clothing. But he did enjoy the sensuous thrill of a lacy silk butt-floss thong constraining itself assuringly against his cornhole. And when he found himself out of quarters with the laundry piling up, he wasn’t above raiding his neighbors’ clotheslines to borrow some clothing; and since he lived next door to an all-girl Catholic School, that meant he could often be seen around town in a plaid skirt and Mary Janes. Digging into his pockets and finding only a single crumpled euro and an unopened packet of condoms that he had optimistically purchased for his trip only to discover that French women have the same aversion to awkward pick-up lines and dicey personal hygiene that American women do, he decided that he shouldn’t be choosey. He jotted down the address of the interviews on the condom wrapper, and went to hop over the fence of the Catholic School to see what he could find to wear.

“No, no no!” screamed Draper as he beheld the transvestites who had shown up to interview for the position. “These people are much too attractive to be Mrs. Claus! For this to work, we need someone so foul that if anyone were to look at him, they’d be so revolted that they’ll immediately look away in disgust. No one I’ve seen comes close to that. Forget it, we’re pulling the plug.”

No sooner had the words left the ad man’s lips when the drunken figure of Jonny staggered into the room. He had been unable to locate a schoolgirl uniform but had managed to sneak a nun’s habit out of the chapel locker room, along with a few bottles of sacramental wine and a blood-stained yardstick. Draper slowly approached the muse and then suddenly pulled back, having never encountered anyone with more alcohol on his breath than his own. The ad man held his nose and went in for a closer look.

The ad man was ready to pull the plug until Jonny walked in the door.

“You!” snapped Draper at the muse. “I have a few questions for you. Can you stand being in sub-zero temperatures for long periods of time?”

“Why…yes,” replied the muse shyly, overcome by Draper’s dashing good looks. “I swim laps in freezing water every day to try and shrink my tragically misshapen genitalia. I’m hoping that if it’s smaller, it might not be quite as disgusting to grab onto as it is now.”

“And would you be okay posing as a woman for long periods of time?” queried the ad man.

“Listen,” answered Jonny. “If I can shrink my wang down to the size I’m hoping for, I might as well be a woman.”

“And now for the $64,000 question,” said Draper, his dreamy eyes narrowing into no-nonsense slits. “Are you comfortable being around people who live in a same-sex relationship?”

A demonic smile suddenly emerged from Jonny’s lips. He said nothing, but calmly lifted his nun’s habit and lowered the gold lammé banana hammock he wore underneath it. Draper gaped in disgust at the twisted, savagely deformed piece of flesh that dangled between Jonny’s legs while the muse reached up his rectum and pulled out a copy of Jonny’s Prison Christmas. He blew off a couple of undigested kernels of corn stuck to the story’s cover and handed it to the ad man. Confused but intrigued, Draper began reading the forbidden tale of dropped soap and enforced anal bondage which Jonny had written to celebrate the birth of a child in a manger, and realized by the third paragraph that the individual wearing the nun’s habit standing before him was so twisted that there was no sexual activity that would phase him.

“You’ve got the job,” said Draper as he lunged for a nearby bottle of Purell to scour the stink of Jonny’s large intestine off of his hands. “But just tell me one thing. Why were you walking around with that old Christmas Card stuck up your anus?”

“I pull all of these stories out of my ass,” replied Jonny, amazed that the existence of Jonny’s Prison Christmas had finally resulted in anything good happening in his life. “If you’ve got a few minutes and some pliers, I think I can find you an old copy of the original Jonny Christmas story, Jonny, The King and the Gaseous Dragon.”

“There’s no time for that,” barked Draper. “We have to stop by city hall, and then you’ve got to catch a flight to the North Pole.”

“Why city hall?” asked the muse while trying to reinsert Jonny’s Prison Christmas up his rectum so that no one could find it.

“We need to have a few dummy documents on file in case some wise-ass snoop pokes around for a marriage certificate,” said Draper. “Just be sure to sign them all ‘Mrs. Santa Claus.’”

Santa Claus was dreading meeting his new “wife” as he and the Tooth Fairy waited at North Pole Airport Baggage Claim while Draper and Jonny went through customs. In Santa’s past interactions with Mrs. Clauses, the most he needed to do was make some polite small talk while the film was changed during a break for a commercial or print ad shoot . The Tooth Fairy always served as Santa’s buffer by showering the actress playing Mrs. Claus with praise for her performance and polite questions about her personal life, the answers to which were always received with rapt attention. The second the shoot was over, Saint Nick would graciously excuse himself back to his workshop while The Tooth Fairy held back to exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses with the actress, always making sure to send her a gift basket and a thank you note the next day. This was the first time Santa had ever had to actually interact with Mrs. Claus, and he was edgy about it.

“What am I going to say to her?” asked Santa as the Fairy combed out his whiskers. “Everyone is supposed to think that we’re married, and we won’t have a thing to talk about.”

“Then you’ll be like every other marriage I know about, doll” replied Cuddles cheerily as he tied a fashionable braid down the center of Santa’s beard. “Anyway, you’ve got to remember it’s really a ‘him,’ even though Don tells me it’s not a ‘him’ we’re likely to ask us to join us in the hot tub. But he’s a member of the family and I want you to make a special effort to make him feel welcome and loved. If he’s ever making you too crazy, just give the braid in your beard a tug and I’ll shoot right in to take the pressure off.”

Santa’s worried frown suddenly melted into a relieved smile as he gazed at The Tooth Fairy gratefully, sending him an unspoken message of how much he loved him. The Fairy beamed back wordlessly, lost in Santa’s loving face, until he caught a glimpse of Draper bounding into the luggage collection area with Jonny in close pursuit. As a show of commitment, the muse had slapped together a crude makeover of himself on the plane to try and make himself appear as feminine as possible before the real work began, with the result being a cross between a failed makeup test for John Travolta in Hairspray and a guy who had lost a Super Bowl bet and was forced to spend the afternoon strolling a downtown intersection in a dress. But Draper, always the epitome of cool, knew there was plenty of time to get the results he wanted.

Jonny had attempted a makeover on himself on the plane ride to the North Pole.

“Sorry we took so long,” said Draper while giving Jonny an annoyed look. “The customs agents had to remove a corkscrew from someone’s anus before we could get through the metal detector.”

“It’s a trick I picked up on my flight home from Paris,” explained Jonny. “I found having a jagged piece of steel lodged in my intestine made the effects of jet lag trivial by comparison.”

“Santa,” said the ad man as he took a drag on a Lucky Strike cigarette, “I’d like to introduce you to Mrs. Claus.”

The group waited for Santa to answer. He stared at Jonny awkwardly, feeling that he should make some encouraging comment on Jonny’s unconvincing makeover. But while Santa loved women as people, their physical attributes had never made any impression on him and had no idea of what to say. And with the train wreck that was Jonny standing before him, Saint Nick was unable to do anything but stare at the muse with an appalled gawk. Everyone stood silently for Santa to finally speak, but all he could do was smile uncomfortably and absent-mindedly stroke his beard. That was the Tooth Fairy’s cue.

“Honey, you look fantastic,” said the fairy as he shot over to Jonny and gave him an impromptu hug. “I wish I could find someone to do something with my rat’s nest of a head of hair that would make me look half as good as you. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start! I’m the Tooth Fairy, but my friends call me Cuddles and since you and I are going to be BFF’s, that’s what you’re going to call me. And what should I call you? ‘Mrs. Claus’ was Santa’s mother and when we have a chance for some alone time, I’ll tell you some stories about what a royal bitch she was.”

“Wikipedia says Mrs. Claus’ first name is Gertrude, but she goes by Jessica,” said Draper. “That’s what we’re going with, since Wikipedia has been proven to be accurate 100% of the time.”

“Ewww…” said Cuddles, scrunching his face into playful mock contempt. “I knew a ‘Jessica’ once. The only bigger bitch I ever came across with Santa’s mother.”

“How about calling her ‘Jessie,’ after our favorite actor, Jesse Merlin?” piped in Santa, the Tooth Fairy’s warmth finally giving him the confidence to speak . “We loved him in U.S.S. Pinafore.”

“You’re kidding,” said Jonny, finally hearing something that allowed him to divert his attention from trying to stand on his high heels. “You saw U.S.S. Pinafore? I wrote and directed it! And you say you loved it?”

“Well…” said Santa, anxious to bring the story back on track after this self-indulgent reference to Jonny’s pathetic theatrical endeavors, “We loved the acting. And the set was great. But the script and direction…”

“The whole thing was fantastic!” bellowed the Tooth Fairy as he shot Saint Nick a killer scowl that signified Santa had almost put his fur-fringed boot in his mouth again. Santa bowed his head in acknowledgement that he had received the message, and Cuddles turned his attention back to Jonny.

“So we’re calling you Jessie,” said the legendary incisor harvester (a moniker even Cuddles thought was lame, but he admitted that it made it easier on short story writers who got sick of not being able to refer to him as anything other than "The Tooth Fairy" every other sentence). “You must be exhausted after that long flight! Why don’t I show you to your bedroom and after you’ve freshened up, we can have a nice long heart-to heart?”

“About the sleeping arrangements,” said Jonny nervously. “I sent ahead some copies of Jonny and The Christmas Pirates so you’ll know I’m up for just about anything. I brought plenty of K-Y Jelly, but I also have Crisco and Nutella if you’re into something dirtier.”

There was an awkward pause that was finally broken by a burst of laughter from the Tooth Fairy; a gale so infectious that Santa and even Draper finally joined in.

“Honey,” chuckled Cuddles, “at Santa’s age and weight there’s only enough Viagra in the world to give him an erection three times a year at most, and those are reserved for me! You’ll be sleeping in the Candy Cane bedroom in the east wing, but Santa and I are in the main living quarters just down the hall if you need anything during the night. Let’s find your bags and get you home, Jessie.”

Jonny found that he loved the work. He spent most of his time having Cuddles drill him on Santa’s personal habits using a questionnaire he had found on Amazon.com called Marrying Your Way to the Sweet Cha-Ching of U.S. Citizenship and in painfully awkward mock sessions with Santa Claus in which Draper and Cuddles played the senators from the red states who would be coming on Christmas Week. Jonny tried hard but Santa wanted nothing to do with it and only the gentle coaxing from his lover got him though the sessions, which comprised chiefly of Jonny putting on a housedress and high heels and reeling off a list of Santa's personal habits, which Saint Nick would respond to by quoting details from "Jessie's" archly-conservative biography that Draper had culled together from factoids taken from the lives of Harriet Nelson, Mamie Eisenhower and Ayn Rand.

The rest of Jonny’s time was his own, and he was surprised to learn that since all of the elves at Santa’s Village knew about Santa and the Tooth Fairy’s relationship already and of the reason he was there, he was free to go through the village in his own person and throw off the feminine garb of Mrs. Claus. And since he already had many friends at the North Pole from his time there in The Year Jonny Saved Christmas and Jonny’s I.T. Christmas, he would spend every night getting happily plastered at one of the local watering holes and watch the sinewy emerald-hued silhouettes of the elves make quiet love to other elves of their own gender in the corners. (The elves' green skin was usually glossed over in media interpretations of them in order to make them more palatable to a larger consumer market; much like Jesus is never depicted as having the dark skin of a native of the middle east or Uncle Sam is never shown as a Native American on a reservation who spends all his time drinking beer in his government-issued kwansit hut's dirt-covered front yard filled with rusted-out cars. The myth that they were tiny folk was also media hype to make them seem unthreatening; improved information on nutrition resulted in growth spurts so that the latest North Pole census reported that the average elf stood 5'9½".) When they were finished with their anonymous trysts, the elves would always return to Jonny's bar stool and include him in their conversations about the latest episode of Nip/Tuck or how Frosty the Snowman wouldn't look so stiff and conservative if he'd only ditch the top hat and get a kicky African Hausa Kufi or even a leather biker's cap.

But Jonny was still lonely. There was almost no feminine companionship to be had at the North Pole, and the handful of female elves were already in relationships with other female elves. Jonny was asked along to the male elves’ gang bangs, but those guys were into such rough trade that even Jonny was turned off by it (and believe me, that is a bold statement). There was one pretty female elf who Jonny would see at the end of the bar every night, quietly reading by herself, but Jonny thought back on some of the romantic disasters he’d suffered through in stories past and decided to cut himself a break just this once and not set himself up for heartache by thinking he was hooking up with a woman only to discover in the last paragraph that she was passionately in love with a jet-setting millionaire or was playing with Jonny's affections in order to fulfill her plot to destroy Christmas for some group of perverts that he had taken a holiday job from. No, this time the muse was playing it safe and keeping to himself.

Still, Jonny couldn’t help but steal glances at that pretty elf who sat all by herself at the end of the bar. Until one night when she wasn’t in her usual spot. The muse looked wistfully down at his glass of vodka (which he knew he would be receiving in abundance for his birthday on December 15th), only to look up and behold the object of his interest sitting on the bar stool next to him.

“Hi, I’m Peaseblossom,” said the pretty elf as she rewarded Jonny with a luminous smile. “I’ve noticed you sitting at the middle of the bar all by yourself every night and I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”

“I dunno,” replied Jonny suspiciously. “Are you going to turn out to be a strumpet who is using me to undermine the holiday season or it turns out is already married to the richest man in the word, Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim Helu? Because I’ve been through that before and if you don’t mind, my heart has been broken so many times that it’s held together with bailing wire.”

“No,” replied Peaseblossom as she motioned for the bartender to refill Jonny’s drink. “I just think that you have pretty eyes.”

"I think that you have pretty eyes," the elf told Jonny.

The muse didn’t know what to make of this plot turn. But his glass was empty so Peaseblossom called the barkeep over to refill it with vodka and to fix her up an apple martini. As they sipped their cocktails, Peaseblossom and the muse exchanged bittersweet stories about their happy but lonely lives; Peaseblossom’s being hindered by the fact that elves typically hooked up with someone of their own gender and she was into dudes, and Jonny’s because he was a sexual deviant and social pariah with questionable hygiene (all of which the pretty elf turned out to have a secret fetish for, and spent most of her free time clandestinely trolling Internet sites that posted photos of sexually deformed freaks who all bore a striking resemblance to Jonny).

After the last call was sounded, the pair shyly parted company with Jonny certain that his delightful evening was a fluke. But when he returned to the bar the next night, he was stunned to see Peaseblossom sitting in the same spot wearing one of the red miniskirts with the white trim that Jonny had admitted to her made him crazy, with an apple martini and three shot glasses of vodka and a vomit bag already ordered and sitting in front of her at the bar. Certain that she must be waiting for someone else, the muse perched himself on the stool on her other side and lightly tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hi,” said Jonny as Peaseblossom turned to see who had beckoned for her attention. “I see you’re waiting for someone and I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to say that I had a really nice time last…”

With that, Peaseblossom shut up the muse by kissing him seductively and softly on his frost-covered lips. Jonny looked at her in surprised amazement as she glided the three vodkas and vomit bag in front of him and gazed happily into his eyes.

“I want to hear more about your theory that the American Nazi Party takes its orders from Walt Disney’s cryogenically frozen head,” said Peaseblossom as she slid her hand effortlessly into Jonny’s. “You explained it a little last night, but you were slurring your words so badly at that point that I was having a hard time grasping it.”

Jonny and the pretty elf met at the bar again the next night. And the next. And soon, their evening didn’t end at the bar, but continued on to her thatched cottage where they made the happy discovery that they not only shared many of the same twisted sexual kinks, but that Jonny’s tragically misshapen genitalia proved to be a perfect fit for her complex elvish plumbing. It soon came to pass that if she wasn’t working on the toy assembly line or he wasn’t learning the intimate details of Santa’s personal habits, they spent every moment in each other’s company. Because it was the one place that they were both happiest.

“How did you know that you were first in love with Santa Claus?” asked Jonny to the Tooth Fairy when they were taking a break from beard braiding workshop. “Was it love at first sight?”

“Are you kidding?” laughed the Tooth Fairy. “When I first met Tubby, I hated him. I was just gaining prominence for putting money under kids’ pillows when they lost a tooth, and he gave a series of magazine interviews blasting me for it. He said it was okay to give children a stuffed animal, a doll, or a chocolate snow man wrapped in aluminum foil to make them happy; but the one thing you shouldn’t give them is money. Like it’s a good idea to give chocolate to a kid who’s just lost a tooth!”

“But how did you know you were in love?” asked the muse, trying to focus back on the subject that interested him.

“It got to be such a bitter media feud that it was hurting all the holidays,” continued Cuddles, “so the Easter Bunny set up a summit in New York for us to work it out. After fifteen minutes, we had forgotten what we were fighting about in the first place. After an hour, we moved the summit from a conference room in the Empire State Building to his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria and by sunset, I was having my things shipped to the North Pole so that I’d never have to leave him.”

“And is the passion still there?”

“Oh, please!” smirked the Tooth Fairy. “It’s hard to be passionate the five nights a year that the hairy tub of blubber announces that the air pump finally did the job and I’d better roll over before the blood rushes back to his ankles again. But I’ve been passionate about a lot of guys before I met Santa. He’s the only one who I can look into his eyes and speak volumes to without saying a word. I know what he’s thinking before he can say it to me, which is just as well because the times that he tries to say it, he usually gets it wrong!”

“So how did you know you were in love?”

The Tooth Fairy thought for a moment until an enigmatic smile finally crossed his face.

“I knew that I was in love with him the moment that I pictured what my life would be like without him, and I realized that wasn’t the life I wanted to lead.”

Jonny said nothing, but thought intently about Peaseblossom and nodded his head in stern agreement.

Jonny’s efforts at playing Mrs. Claus had finally come so far along that even Santa was starting to relax around the muse, so the Tooth Fairy decided it was time to celebrate with a graduation dinner. One day after Jonny had scored 100% on a quiz where he had to name the creepiest actors to ever play Santa in a movie or TV show (Paul Giamatti in Fred Claus, John Call in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and Paul Lynde in a special holiday edition of Hollywood Squares), a playful smile crossed Cuddles’ face.

“Santa and I are having you over for dinner this Saturday night, December 15th,” announced the Tooth Fairy. “A little birdie told me it’s your birthday, when gifts of alcohol are the traditional tribute. And since you’ll be walking into Present Central, be prepared to check your liver at the door before you can come in.”

“That’s sounds great,” stammered the muse awkwardly. “But I had already made plans…”

“We won’t take no for an answer,” countered Cuddles. “Don’t worry; it will just be a small, intimate dinner – nothing too big. Just you, me, and Santa. And to balance things out, we thought we’d invite one of the elves from the toy assembly line as well. I hear that there’s one named Peaseblossom who was given the night off just so she’d be available. Something tells me she’d complete a perfect foursome.”

Jonny beamed a delighted smile as the Tooth Fairy burst into elated laughter.

The muse always looked forward to his birthday on December 15th as gifts of alcohol came flooding in from all over the world. But he had never recalled being so happy on that date as when he woke up that morning and saw Peaseblossom laying asleep next to him. And since he still had a buzz on from guzzling plain-wrap vodka the night before, when Winston laid at the foot of the bed and let loose a noxious fart which wafted its way directly into the muse’s sinus cavity, Jonny knew that he could speak to the Pug and get a sentient reply.

“The sights and sounds of the Christmas season always fill my heart with happiness,” garbled Jonny as Peaseblossom began stirring from night terrors and started sleepwalking towards the open vat of sulphuric acid that he kept in the bedroom for emergencies. “And when you add my birthday on December 15th and the gifts of alcohol that come with it to the mix, I’m always happier still. But this year, I’m at least a hundred times more joyful than I ever was before. Why is that?”

“The sights and sounds of the Christmas season always fill my heart with happiness,” said Jonny as Peaseblossom began sleepwalking towards the open vat of sulphuric acid that he kept in the bedroom for emergencies.

“Because this year, your life isn’t just about yourself anymore,” replied the Pug as he clenched the pant leg of the still-somnambulistic Peaseblossom's pajamas in his teeth and led her away from the acid, making a mental note to advise Jonny to move the vat out of the bedroom if this sleepwalking thing of hers turned out to be a habit. “Since Peaseblossom came into the picture, your point of view – which was once fixed solely on the minute corner of the world that you populate – has expanded to include her and everything and everyone who is important to her. Those people and things have magnified your heart, and your soul has grown to take in all the love that comes with them. And as both your soul and Peaseblossom’s soul expand to take in the people and things that you each accept from each other, they will begin to merge; not into a single soul – for you will always maintain an individuality from each other – but as two separate souls who feed from each other and ultimately depend on one another for support and sustenance in order to survive.”

“That’s beautiful,” said Jonny as he hiccupped a small projectile of vodka-infused vomit up his esophagus. “And when our souls have merged to the point that you’re talking about, what can we do to let the rest of the world know that it should regard us in many respects as a single being?”

“Humans have a created a ritual for the merging of two souls,” replied Winston. “It’s called marriage.”

When Jonny and Peaseblossom (with Winston in close pursuit) knocked on Santa and the Tooth Fairy’s door, they were both nervous. Peaseblossom was obviously tense because this was the first time she had met with her legendary boss in a social setting, but the muse’s anxiety was harder to put a finger on. Her misgivings disappeared as soon as Santa opened the door and thrust Happy Birthday hats on each of their heads (and a rubber butt plug up Winston’s careless anus to protect the pristine carpet) and the Tooth Fairy insisted that they would have to play a round of the game Celebrity (during which Santa unsuccessfully tried to hold back his delight when everyone playing included him amongst the famous names that they were attempting to guess) before they could even think about dinner. But Jonny continued to seem inexplicably distracted through the game and then through dinner, until a chocolate birthday cake had been wheeled out and gifts of alcohol (which, I hasten to remind you, are the traditional tribute for celebrating his birthday) had been opened. The muse finally divulged the source of his tension after the final present was dispatched, when he led Peaseblossom to the center of the room and knelt down before her.

“Peaseblossom,” said Jonny as his beloved looked down in confusion at him, “I’ve received many wonderful presents tonight – especially the bottles of Grey Goose vodka, which are always the best thing to give me for my birthday – but nothing has meant anything to me like your presence besides me. Since the moment I met you, I’ve felt our souls merging until it came to pass that I can’t be parted from you and continue to survive. So in the presence of our closest friends, I ask you from the bottom of my heart: Will you marry me?”

Jonny asked Peaseblossom to marry him.

With that, Jonny produced the biggest cubic zirconium ring that the Home Shopping Center offered, and breathlessly waited for her reply.

It wasn’t what he had hoped for. Both Santa and the Tooth Fairy looked sadly away and Peaseblossom’s eyes swelled up with tears. Instead of taking the ring, she came down to her knees so that she could be face-to-face with Jonny.

“Every fiber of my being makes me want to say yes,” said the pretty elf as she took Jonny’s hand in hers. “But elvish law dictates that dudes can only marry other dudes and chicks can only marry other chicks. For a dude to marry a chick is strictly forbidden.”

“I’m afraid it’s true,” said Santa as he wiped the tears from his own eyes with a napkin. “I was opposed to it myself, but it snuck through as a rider on a popular bill that made it a misdemeanor to publicly pass gas after eating figgy pudding.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Jonny.

“Some might even say contrived,” replied Peaseblossom, who now wished that she had demanded script approval to her contract demands before agreeing to be cast in this idiotic story. “Some of the few straight elves have tried to lobby for the law to change so we can be married, but we’re in the minority and the gay elves in charge are too grossed out by the concept of penile-vaginal penetration to imagine that it can be just as much an expression of love as a Charleston Chew or a Dirty Sanchez. But it’s okay; we can do everything that we’d do if we had a marriage certificate. We can live together and raise a family. We just can’t be ‘married.’”

“You mean we can live our lives in a society that refuses to acknowledge what the life we are leading actually is,” thundered the muse. “I’m not going to live a life where I have to worry that the next-door neighbors are secretly rolling their eyes in disgust when I refer to you as my wife at one of the lavish dinner parties they've invited us to which only gay couples can seem to pull off! A wedding isn’t going to make you my wife … a wedding only tells the world that you already are my wife. What kind of a law is it that denies us the right to make a symbolic statement about a union that already exists in fact? Only an idiotic, heart-breaking law. We'll just have to go somewhere that recognizes straight people's right to be married; like Arkansas.”

“Uh...yeahhhhh,” said Peaseblossom while looking for the words to tactfully make a point. “The problem with someplace like Arkansas is that while they're good with straight people getting married, they're not all that sympathetic to the whole 'elf' thing. Living at the North Pole is our only option if we want to escape a life of persecution.”

“We both know your pain,” intoned Santa as he sadly placed his hand into the Tooth Fairy’s open palm.“Cuddles and I always dreamed of retiring to North Carolina, but ever since they adopted a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, we had to cross it off our list because we both have always had a peeve about living amongst fascist, narrow-minded imbeciles. That’s why I’ve been so cold to you these last few months, Jonny. It’s not because I don’t like you – I don’t, but that’s not the reason why I treat you like dirt. The laws of your world and the elves’ world have each shown just how cruel these marriage rules are. Granted, they show them in a crudely-written and obvious fashion; but what can you do? You’ve come here to play a role that’s already been filled. Santa Claus doesn’t need a wife because he already has a husband, and one that he wouldn’t give up for all the appropriations that the U.S. senate can offer me. I know it and Cuddles knows it; and any part of the world that refuses to acknowledge it, just because the reality makes them uncomfortable, doesn’t make it any less real.”

“But how do you deal with the heartbreak?” asked the muse he held Peaseblossom’s hand while Winston looked up the chimney in embarrassment, appalled that this kind of emotional depth was being used in a moronic Jonny Christmas Story. “Doesn’t it kill you to know that the relationship which is the center of your universe is given second-class status by the society that you live in?”

Santa looked sadly into the Tooth Fairy’s eyes and absent-mindedly lit his pipe.

“Every minute of every hour of every day of my life,” answered Saint Nick.

There wasn’t any time for Jonny to recover from the body-blow of Peaseblossom turning down his marriage proposal because the senate committee convoy would soon be arriving. Every conservative politician in the Republican Party would be at the North Pole to be sure that Santa’s relationship with Mrs. Claus was “normal” enough for them to continue funding Santa’s workshop. The massive collection of sex toys and blow-up dolls were carefully removed from Jonny’s sleeping quarters and put into storage, as the muse moved into the main bedroom for the week and the Tooth Fairy checked into the Comfort Inn a half a mile from the Arctic Circle.

“I don’t remember the last time we spent the night apart,” said Santa as tears swelled in his eyes.

“It was last June, when I was the keynote speaker at the American Dental Association convention in Tampa,” replied Cuddles. “That also marks the last time I slept through the night without a certain lardo’s snoring waking me up at least half a dozen times. Now pull yourself together and give me a kiss before I hit the Jacuzzi.”

Santa and the Tooth Fairy coupled in a passionate kiss, when only a final tremble from Cuddles’ lower lip betrayed his true despair at being parted from Santa for the week. When they finally pulled apart, the Tooth Fairy’s eyes were as awash with tears as his partner’s.

“I’ll see you in a week,” said the Tooth Fairy. “Be sure to butch it up so that those Republicans give us enough of a budget hike to install an espresso machine in the elves’ break room. They’ve started dragging their green little tushies at 2:30 in the afternoon and I’m afraid that some poor kid is going to celebrate Christmas by getting lead poisoning from licking a sloppily-painted tin soldier. What are we, China?”

Peaseblossom watched in fascination as the elves transformed Jonny into "Mrs. Claus."

Santa didn’t have time to wallow in his sadness because he had to collect Jonny and meet the senate committee from the Red States. The most gifted makeup artists, hair stylists and personal shoppers from amongst all the elves were brought together to achieve Jonny's final transformation into Mrs. Claus, and even Santa was impressed at what they had pulled off. The muse was still repulsive and had a stench that no amount of tomato sauce could mask, but Saint Nick couldn’t deny that anyone on the review board would think of Jonny as anything but female. And Peaseblossom, who had witnessed Jonny’s transformation from start to finish in enthralled fascination, finally couldn’t suppress her laughter at her beau’s new look and filled the salon with howls of merriment.

“If you can be this convincing as woman,” chuckled the pretty elf as she gently stroked Jonny's wig, “maybe the North Pole will let us get married after all.”

“Maybe they will at that,” laughed Jonny, gliding the edge of his hand along Peaseblossom's cheek while trying to ignore the other elves surrounding them screwing up their faces in disgust at their hetero public display of affection. “But it's not the elves we have to convince right now; it's the GOP. So if you’ll excuse us, my husband and I need to meet some arch-conservatives.”

Jonny was overcome by a sudden case of stage fright as they walked into the North Pole Hilton east ballroom for the cocktail reception that had been set up to meet the committee members and their wives (who were protected from the North Pole's freezing temperature by the hot air emitted from their husbands), but he relaxed when Santa proved himself to be an old hand at dealing with such people and especially with the chairman, who he knew too well. From the moment he shook Senator Santorum’s hand, Santa’s whole demeanor changed and he listened in rapt attention at every unbending right wing platitude that came out of any member of the group’s mouths. From how Barack Obama was single-handedly destroying the country, to what a great president Mitt Romney would have been (despite the Mormon issue, which most members of the committee thought he could get over just by drinking a few cups of black coffee), to how the female reproductive system was able to shut itself down after a “legitimate” rape, to building a massive wall across the Mexican border that no one would explain how to pay for after they’d slashed taxes and doubled the military budget even though they all said there was a "five point plan" devised by the party that would make it easy, to how abortion was murder under any circumstances (pushing Jonny into a near panic when one particularly passionate member of the committee insisted that masturbation was manslaughter, which forced the muse to conclude that if that was the case, he was the worst mass murderer since Hitler), every member of the group seemed to speak with the same voice (and usually with the exact same verbiage for their rationalizations, supplied in a handy folder by the PR department at Fox News). And while Santa never went so far as to agree with their insanely extreme opinions, he was always careful never to disagree either.

Jonny played his part to the hilt as well; and whenever he was stuck in a social quandary where he wasn’t sure what Mrs. Claus – Jessie, as he remembered to call himself – would say or do, he simply pictured how the Tooth Fairy would act in the same situation and it always got him through the rocky shores.

But sometimes the muse forgot himself. He tried to smile politely and nod in seeming agreement when Santorum went off on a rant about his favorite topics, but Jonny momentarily broke character when the red state leader went on a diatribe about his pet project: a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

“Marriage should be between a man and a woman,” proclaimed Santorum as his wife looked adoringly on. “That’s how God wants it. The Holy Father created our bodies so that a man’s reproductive organ partners with that of a woman’s in the divine act of conception, during which a fully-formed human soul has been created - even it does look like a thimble-full of Jergen’s Lotion at that point. Any other sexual congress is unnatural and immoral, and should be regarded as such.”

“Marriage should be between a man and a woman,” proclaimed Santorum.

“If you want to look at it that way, almost all sexual acts are unnatural,” responded Jonny. “They also absolutely rock! It may be true that erotic contact wasn’t foremost in God's mind when the the genitalia and the right hand were first being intelligently designed, but I wouldn’t have gotten through my teenage years without it. If you want to be extreme about it, even kissing is an unnatural act because after talking to you people, I've learned that the human mouth was apparently conceived for only two things: eating and talking about how Barack Obama is ruining the country. Are we to deny ourselves the erotic bliss of sucking face just because we came up with the schematics on our own, only using God’s blueprint as a starting point?”

“Jessie certainly isn’t afraid to speak her little mind!” chuckled Santa as he put his arm around Jonny, giving the muse a gentle pinch to remind him what was at stake. “How long have you and the senator been married, Mrs. Santorum?”

“Rick and I met at the University of Pittsburgh,” responded the chairman's wife. “We dated for a while and I kept asking him where the relationship was going. He prayed about it, and God told him that we needed to be united in marriage. That was twelve years ago.”

“And since you’ve been married for twelve years,” asked Jonny innocently, “where is your relationship going now?”

Mrs. Santorum’s blank look made Jonny realize that he had asked a question that had never occurred to her. It was then the muse comprehended that most couples only questioned the status of their relationship before they were married; after the ceremony was complete and the Thank You cards had been sent and the wedding dress was consigned to the attic, the issue was never addressed again until it was time to hire a divorce attorney. The muse promised himself then and there to never make that mistake with Peaseblossom.

Fortunately, Jonny’s faux pas were few and far between and with the spectacular Christmas display at the North Pole, the committee members were easily distracted; especially since Santa had planned nightly cocktail receptions and made sure that the senators’ glasses were never empty. He worried when the senators toured the toy workshop that the assembly line workers' in-your-face sexuality would blow the plan, but Santa quickly realized that the elves' green skin proved to be an advantage as the Republicans were accustomed to ignoring people of color. And when Saint Nick opened his books to the committee and they saw that rather than having to deal with the pitfalls that hinder U.S. job creators like paying minimum wage and providing group health coverage that Santa only paid his elves a handful of pixie dust a week, they decided to look the other way at his bringing jobs to the North Pole and away from workers at home. The senators didn't even seem to mind that when the elf Rumplestimbleskins answered the phone at the help desk, he had callers refer to him as "Justin."

The legislators only seemed to care if "Mr. and Mrs. Claus" were the "right" kind of people, and when Jonny performed a carefully rehearsed dialogue between himself and an empty chair playing Barack Obama (an assignment that the muse took to with ease, since his checkered theatrical career had made him accustomed to performing in front of empty chairs), the committee finally gave their stamp of approval to the "couple." But Santa was still taking no chances. He made a great show on Christmas Eve of preparing his sleigh to deliver toys to all the good boys and girls in the world (after Santorum and company had vetted the list to make sure there weren’t any benefactors of pro-Obama Super Pacs named on it), and the chairman and his fellow senators were suitably impressed to make a decision. Just as Santa was preparing to depart for his annual flight, Santorum held Saint Nick back to make an announcement.

“Santa,” said the senator, “the other members of the committee and I have been impressed with just how ‘normal’ everything is here at the North Pole. We’re especially happy that your relationship with Mrs. Claus – Jessie – is something that every right-thinking Christian American boy and girl would want to emulate.”

With that, Santorum made a little wave at Jonny which the muse responded to in kind, privately wishing that the ceremony would soon be over because the constraining lace thong he was wearing under his housedress was smashing his misshapen junk against his pelvis.

“The committee met this afternoon,” continued Santorum, and “unanimously decided that God would want us to double your budget next year. Congratulations!”

A sudden wave of relief overcame Santa as he thought of all the good the extra money would do for making next Christmas even merrier. But even more than that, Santa felt an enormous weight of anxiety lift from off his shoulders. Only the Tooth Fairy knew how much this appropriation meant to Santa because without it, he would have no choice but to lay off hundreds of elves, some of whom had been employed at the workshop for generations. Losing their jobs on the toy assembly lines meant many of them would have to look for work as P.A.’s on The 700 Club or as pages at the Republican National Committee, where they would have to join many of the people already employed there in hiding their sexuality in miserable, closeted existences. Saint Nick opened his mouth to express some words of gratitude, but his abrupt physical reaction to the strain releasing itself from his system made him freeze and then drop to his knees. The committee watched in horror while an overwhelming wave of pain ran through Santa’s chest as he grabbed his left arm in the universal sign that he was having a heart attack.

“Get him to the North Pole free clinic!” screamed Jonny as he cradled Santa’s head in his lap. “That’s all we can afford until ObamaCare fully kicks in next year!”

“That’s not enough,” overruled Santorum. “There’s a naval hospital half a mile from the Arctic Circle that’s fully equipped for this kind of thing. We’ll call for a chopper and bring him there. The senate will foot the bill.”

The place descended into hysterical chaos as medical technicians were frantically called to try and save Santa. Everything was so frenzied and panic-stricken that no one noticed as Jonny quietly got out his cell phone and dialed the front desk at the Arctic Circle Comfort Inn and asked to be connected to the Tooth Fairy’s room.

Santa’s situation was grave as the chopper touched down at the naval hospital. Limousines carrying the committee members followed close behind and the senators demanded to have access to Santa’s room. But they were stopped in their tracks by a stern nurse who was clearly unimpressed with the committee's political pedigree.

“Santa is in critical condition and isn’t expected to pull through,” said the nurse. “Only the next-of-kin can have access to him at this point. Who is that?”

The nurse said that only Santa's next-of-kin could see him.

Jonny was pushed to the front of the assemblage and prepared to hustle into the ICU when he noticed a lone figure sitting in the waiting room, as white as a sheet. The members of the committee were hysterically demanding that Jonny learn of Santa’s condition first-hand, but the muse ignored their orders and instead paced quietly across the length of the lounge and sat down next to his friend The Tooth Fairy.

“They won’t tell me anything,” muttered the stunned Cuddles as Jonny gently held his hand. “There were ‘domestic partnership’ forms that we always said we were going to fill out, but we never did because we were afraid it would out our relationship. He’s so frightened in there all by himself, but they won’t let me see him.”

The muse tried to come up with a response when Santorum and Company descended on the pair, demanding that Jonny see Santa.

“Mrs. Claus, your husband could be dead at any moment,” said Santorum. “We have a twenty billion dollar appropriation that depends on whether or not he survives. Why are you wasting your time taking to this man?”

“Because he’s Santa Claus’ husband!” replied Jonny as he pulled off his wig in a dramatic reveal that is obligatory for one of these idiotic gender-switch stories. “I know you don’t like that because you’ve convinced yourself that it’s not what God wants; that it somehow 'devalues' what you think of as marriage. But to some people this is the holiest day of the year; a day when – more than any other time – we need to show that we love each other. Well these two men love each other with more tenderness and devotion with any couple I’ve ever known, and just because you have a two thousand year-old book that you think doesn’t call it ‘marriage,’ it’s the most devout and holy union of two souls that I’ve ever come across. Now I suggest you get out of the way so the Tooth Fairy can see his husband in the ICU. A week of having my gonads taped between my thighs has made me mean.”

With that, the clock in the waiting room struck midnight.

“It’s Christmas, the holiest day of the year,” said Santorum. “Only a heathen reprobate would pick such a time to defile God’s divine plan. We will not stand here and allow you to besmirch the Almighty’s wishes with the gay agenda."

"But it's okay for you to tout the Intolerant White Religious Nut Job's agenda," countered Jonny, "just because you were able to con voters into putting you in a place of power because they mistakenly think that being religious is the same thing as being moral. We have to stop thinking in terms of the gay agenda or the Hispanic agenda or the black agenda or the female agenda, and see it as all part of the human agenda. That's the only way we can evolve as a society."

"Evolution?" replied Santorum. "More blasphemy! I've heard enough. We will not pass.”

The members in the committee locked arms to create an impenetrable wall as Jonny stretched in preparation of smashing through the barrier and carrying the Tooth Fairy to Santa. Just as the muse crouched and was about to try and push through the mob, a low rumbling suddenly came from the back of the waiting room.

“Why don’t you let Me worry about God’s wishes?”

Everyone turned around to see a beautiful woman holding a baby standing before them, brilliantly illuminated by a light that strangely seemed to emit from within her.

Everyone turned around to see a beautiful woman holding a baby standing before them.

“And who exactly are you?” asked Santorum as he puffed himself up in full senatorial glory.

“I’m God, you idiot,” replied the woman as she gently tickled the baby’s chin. “You should know, Ricky. You yack your head off to me in prayer day and night; although I’m not sure how you can call it prayer when all that you’re doing is telling me that the crap you’re always pulling is in My best interest.”

“You can't be God,” said Santorum. “You're the virgin Mary at best.”

“Virgin," smirked the woman. “Yeah, right!”

“Everyone knows that The Holy Father is in the form of a man with a long white beard,” insisted the senator.

“And it never occurred to you that God might be the Holy Mother,” replied the woman. “A mother who loves Her children unconditionally and accepts Her children for who they are and what they are, no matter what? I knew I made a mistake in letting those misogynistic religious elders publish that silly Bible with its horror stories about an angry Daddy who’d spank you whenever you step out of line,. The God in the Bible is a man because the Bible was written by men - straight men. And all the rules and laws in it are men’s rules, not God’s rules.”

“Are you expecting me to believe that God doesn’t support the Holy Word of the scripture?” demanded Santorum.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your scripture,” replied the woman, “because it doesn’t have anything to do with Me. I created heaven and the earth for people to love each other on; that was that. Then a tiny group of religious nut jobs who happened to be in power were convinced that they spoke for God because they were so arrogant that it couldn’t occur to them that God didn’t agree with every single misogynistic viewpoint that they clung to. So they collected some fables in a book as a vague handbook of their narrow view of morality, which later religious nut jobs convinced themselves was literal fact. It never occurred to them that the children I created turned out to be more flexible and creative than I realized, and they found that they could love each other in ways that even I hadn’t thought of. By that time you had convinced yourselves that the rules and laws those early whack-jobs had come up with were handed down by Me personally, and if any of those rules proved to have some contradictions or inconsistencies, it was somehow an affront to Me to revise them. The only thing that’s an affront to Me is when yet another tiny group of religious nut jobs who happen to be in power claim to be speaking in My name. I tell ya, some things never change.”

“Does this mean that you’re not opposed to gay marriage?” asked Jonny, who realized that the woman standing before them was exactly who She said She was.

“I don’t care about marriage at all,” replied God. “Do you actually think that when I was creating the universe – which, incidentally, took Me billions of years to finish; I wouldn’t be able to get the permits approved in six days – I gave any thought to a ceremony where two people merged their financial assets for life and screwed them on filing their income tax? That’s something you people came up with and rubber-stamped My signature on to give it teeth. I know marriage is a big deal to you because some of you think it unites you in My eyes. But as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t mean anything. If you want to know if you’ve been united in My eyes, wait until you’ve finished out your lives and you’re standing at the Pearly Gates. If you’ve scored at least 90% on the United In God’s Eyes Throughout the Course of Your Lifetime multiple choice quiz, you made it. Most couples who have had a marriage ceremony fail the test. Some couples who haven’t, pass it with flying colors. And it doesn’t matter one bit if they’re a man and a woman, two men, or two women. Love is love.”

“But sexual orientation is a choice!” countered Santorum.

“Are you retarded?” replied Jonny. “If it was a choice, I would have saved myself a lot of grief by choosing to be attracted to overweight divorcees whose biological clocks were running out.”

“I can see you’re not going to let this go even after hearing My view on the subject,” replied God. “I just wanted to bring baby Jesus here by so that Santa could wish him a happy birthday before he delivered his presents.”

“That’s Jesus?” asked Jonny in amazement.

“Yeah, poor guy,” said God. “So many people pray to the baby Jesus that he’s gotten stuck in the infant stage even though he’s over two thousand years old. To tell you the truth, it makes breast-feeding him kind of creepy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” moaned the Tooth Fairy. “Santa’s dying.”

“Broadway’s dying,” chuckled a merry voice from just inside the Intensive Care Unit. “Santa’s going to be just fine.”

Everyone in the waiting room gasped as the unmistakable figure of Santa waddled out through the ICU door. As the members of the senate committee looked on in astonishment, the Tooth Fairy darted out of his chair and enveloped Santa is a passionate bear hug.

“You scared the daylights out of me, you fat bastard,” screamed Cuddles as he slapped Santa on the shoulder. “We all thought you had a heart attack!”

“It was just my acid reflux,” said Santa. “In all the excitement this week, I guess I forgot to take my Mylanta.”

“It was a heart attack,” whispered God to Jonny. “I used My executive privilege to cancel it. I know I do a lot of things that you people think of as pretty heartless, but even I’m not such a dick that I’d kill Santa Claus on Christmas Day.”

As if all this wasn’t enough, Santa’s toy-laden sleigh, piloted by none other than Peaseblossom and the mayor of Santa’s Village, landed effortlessly in the hospital parking lot. As soon as she pulled the emergency break, Peaseblossom flew out of the sleigh, through the emergency room doors and into Jonny’s arms.

“I have wonderful news,” said Peaseblossom as she planted a lingering kiss on the muse’s lips. “The mayor of Santa’s Village knows all about us and is going to let us get married!”

The mayor of Santa's Village proclaimed that both heterosexual and same-sex marriages would now be legal at the North Pole.

“The village council talked it over,” said the mayor, hot on Peaseblossom’s heels, “and we all agreed that the idea of heterosexual sex really, really grosses us out. But then I remembered that the first time anyone suggested I tried a Cleveland Steamer, I was grossed out as well; and now all I need is half a bottle of Amaretto and I'm totally into it. The point is that we have no right to legislate how some people live their lives just because those in power don’t understand it or want it for themselves. And we refuse to take the cowardly way out by putting a blind eye to the situation by claiming what we want is what God wants.”

“Amen to that, brother,” said God, as baby Jesus spit up on Her pale blue robe.

“So we have decided that from now on,” proclaimed the mayor, “that any couple in Santa’s Village – be they gay or straight – may be legally married in the eyes of our community, so long as they are in love and committed to the merging of their two souls for the rest of their lifetimes. Straight sex still grosses us out; but marriage isn’t about sex, it’s about love.”

So all was happiness at the North Pole. Santa and the Tooth Fairy came publicly out of the closet with their relationship, got married at the North Pole and the world happily discovered that their committed union served only to increase the value of "traditional" marriage; as straight couples who were capable of looking at the world outside of their own anuses studied the devotion the two had for each other as a model for their own relationships. God went back to heaven to keep working on the Big Picture, not giving a second thought about the minutia that people get so worked up about when they mistakenly claim that it was all part of Her plan in the first place. Don Draper was named the sexiest man alive by People magazine. Rick Santorum decided to drop out of politics and become a professional village idiot after getting his ass handed to him by Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. The Senate Committee on Holiday Appropriations and Women’s Health Issues decided to go ahead and give Santa's workshop its full funding, just so they could claim that Barack Obama still couldn't get a handle on the deficit. And all the good boys and girls in the world received their Christmas presents right on schedule.

And now is the part of the story where you find out about what happened with Jonny M. Those of you who are long-time followers of these moronic, gross-out stories will be shocked to read that Jonny and Peaseblossom actually did get married in a simple and beautiful ceremony at the North Pole where the Tooth Fairy was the best man, Santa Claus gave away the bride and none of Jonny's family or friends showed up because they were still pissed off at his Photoshopping their Facebook photographs into illustrations for these stupid stories every year. But a surprise attendee at the ceremony was God, who admitted that when most people think She's lurking somewhere at the back during their weddings, She's usually home watching TiVoed episodes of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

And at the conclusion of these stories, you always read about Jonny's wise-ass, cynical happy ending. But marriages aren’t about endings; they’re about beginnings and making your way through life with someone you love even though you’re never quite sure what the future will hold in store. And since this year’s story is about marriage and I've decided to cut Jonny a break for once and not end this thing on a sick note in order to pander to my twisted readership, I’m keeping my sneering conclusions to myself so that the characters can make those discoveries on their own. But I can tell you that after they watched Santa’s sleigh fly away into the beautifully clear night, Jonny and Peaseblossom gazed serenely into each other’s eyes and realized that perhaps for the first time for each of them, it would not only be a merry Christmas, but a happy one. And they each prayed that they would find the strength of character and love from within themselves to make that happiness sustain itself throughout the course of their lives together; just like their friends Santa and the Tooth Fairy had.

Peaseblossom and Jonny watched Santa’s sleigh fly away into the beautifully clear night.

And Happy Christmas to you, dear friend. Whether you’re celebrating the season with a loving partner (be it someone of the opposite sex or one of your own), surrounding yourself with an extended family of friends and relatives, or making your way through the holidays by yourself aided only by the countless gifts of alcohol that you received on your birthday (like the real-life author of this story, whose own birthday happens to fall on December 15th), I hope you consider my belief that God the Mother created this universe for Her children to live in and be happy, and whatever rules we choose to live by were created by mortal people and do not affect the acceptance that our divine creator holds for us if we conclude that some of those rules blow chunks. God loves us unconditionally and wants us all to follow the path that leads to our ultimate happiness. And She blesses us with that love on Christmas and every day of the year that surrounds it.

And know that you always have a loving friend in Jonny M.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Directed by Jonny M. Written by Jonny M. (and a team of ghostwriters) Illustrated by Jonny M. Costume Design HalloweenCostumes.com Best Boy Winston Caterer Reel Chefs FEATURING

Santa Claus The Tooth Fairy Mrs. Claus I Mrs. Claus II First Transvestite in Ad Second Transvestite in Ad Winston Grumpy man in photograph Don Draper Jonny M. Transvestite Job Applicants Peaseblossom Bartender Barflies Cupid Bar Patron Who Will Not Be Served Chocolate Brown Hot Female Convict Delighted Chick in Santa Hat Elves in Salon Rick Santorum Wedding Party Palace Guard Nurse Senators God Baby Jesus Mayor of Santa's Village Body Double for Jonny M. Body Double for Peaseblossom

Ja'Son Fogelson Rob Vestal Robin Fogelson Mara Marini Dan E. Campbell Glenn "Piece of Shit" Simon Himself Carl Reiner Jon Hamm Himself Jeff "Puke" Simon "Crispy" Bacon Jesse Merlin Larry Zerner Tom Ashworth Wade Sheeler Eddie Izzard Amy Ball Ken Summers Frank Novak Jonny M. Ian McKellen Lacie Harmon Robin Greenspan Georgina Spelvin Georgina Spelvinski Peter Fields Robert Wolfskill Joe Colligan Bro Joe Beau Billingslea Debbie Gates Mimi Freedman Jeff Baughman Tony Potter Himself Grace Curtsem Prince William Catherine Middleton Prince Harry Donna Manus Susskind Fiama Fricano Todd Akin Steve Peterson Mark Ringer Josh Helmuth Michele Bachmann Stephanie Fredricks A Rolled-Up Beach Towel and a Honeydew Melon George Takei Lars Fargo   Gisele Bündchen

         

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