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And they got to passing off almost anything for turkeyshalfgrown hummingbirds, and even rocs out of the Arabian Nightsthe real turkeys were so scarce. And cranberrieswell, they asked a diamond apiece for cranberries. All the woods and orchards were cut down for Christmastrees, and where the woods and orchards used to be it looked just like a stubblefield, with the stumps. After a while they had to make Christmastrees out of rags, and stuff them with bran, like oldfashioned dolls; but there were plenty of rags, because people got so poor, buying presents for one another, that they couldnt get any new clothes, and they just wore their old ones to tatters. They got so poor that everybody had to go to the poorhouse, except the confectioners, and the fancystore keepers, and the picturebook sellers, and the expressmen; and they all got so rich and proud that they would hardly wait upon a person when he came to buy. It was perfectly shameful

Well, after it had gone on about three or four months, the little girl, whenever she came into the room in the morning and saw those great ugly, lumpy stockings dangling at the fireplace, and the disgusting presents around everywhere, used to just sit down and burst out crying. In six months she was perfectly exhausted; she couldnt even cry any more; she just lay on the lounge and rolled her eyes and panted. About the beginning of October she took to sitting down on dolls wherever she found themFrench dolls, or any kindshe hated the sight of them so; and by Thanksgiving she was crazy, and just slammed her presents across the room.

By that time people didnt carry presents around nicely any more. They flung them over the fence, or through the window, or anything; and, instead of running their tongues out and taking great pains to write For dear Papa, or Mamma, or Brother, or Sister, or Susie, or Sammie, or Billie, or Bobbie, or Jimmie, or Jennie, or whoever it was, and troubling to get the spelling right, and then signing their names, and Xmas, 18, they used to write in the giftbooks, Take it, you horrid old thing and then go and bang it against the front door. Nearly everybody had built barns to hold their presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere. Sometimes the police used to come and tell them to shovel their presents off the sidewalk, or they would arrest them.

Well, the night before, the boys stayed up to celebrate, as they always do, and fell asleep before twelve oclock, as usual, expecting to be wakened by the bells and cannon. But it was nearly eight oclock before the first boy in the United States woke up, and then he found out what the trouble was. As soon as he could get his clothes on he ran out of the house and smashed a big cannontorpedo down on the pavement; but it didnt make any more noise than a damp wad of paper; and after he tried about twenty or thirty more, he began to pick them up and look at them. Every single torpedo was a big raisin Then he just streaked it upstairs, and examined his firecrackers and toypistol and twodollar collection of fireworks, and found that they were nothing but sugar and candy painted up to look like fireworks Before ten oclock every boy in the United States found out that his Fourth of July things had turned into Christmas things; and then they just sat down and criedthey were so mad. There are about twenty million boys in the United States, and so you can imagine what a noise they made. Some men got together before night, with a little powder that hadnt turned into purple sugar yet, and they said they would fire off one cannon, anyway. But the cannon burst into a thousand pieces, for it was nothing but rockcandy, and some of the men nearly got killed. The Fourth of July orations all turned into Christmas carols, and when anybody tried to read the Declaration, instead of saying, When in the course of human events it becomes necessary, he was sure to sing, God rest you, merry gentlemen. It was perfectly awful.