A Visit from St. Nicholas is a poem written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823. You might know it from the opening line: “Twas the Night before Christmas”. Anyway, it’s pretty bad. The meter is awkward and the sentiment cheesy.

As a service, here’s an all-new, saccharin-free version of the poem, written from the perspective of a worry-worn JavaScript developer on the eve of the big release.

’Twas the night before Launch Day, and all thro’ the house

Not a keyboard was stirring, no trackpad or mouse;

The branches committed, each package declared,

All sources deployed and the README prepared;

The code fully linted, the test suites created,

Dependencies synced and the Shrinkwrap updated;

The work all complete, I slid into a nap,

And while I was dozing, I dreamt of the app —

When, there from my phone there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter;

“Support” said the voice, and before we had spoken,

I knew why they’d called me — the app was quite broken;

I frantically probed at the cause of the crash

(“Did they refresh the page? Did they empty the cache?”)

Growing more desperate and racked by confusion,

I looked to the skies as I craved resolution;

Then, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer;

With no moment to lose, they swung into action,

As two-at-a-time they pursued the infraction;

With Dasher and Dancer examining traces,

Comet and Cupid set to balancing braces;

Prancer and Vixen combed source code for nits,

While Donner and Blitzen bisected commits;

Before very long they’d discovered the glitch

(I’d forgotten a `break` and so fell through the `switch`)

Then, working together, a patch was submitted,

The code was accepted, solution commited;

Before I could thank them, the reindeer were gone,

(all that remained were their tracks on the lawn);

But I heard them exclaim, as they flew out of sight —

“You can whine about Crockford, but sometimes he’s right!”

All of which is a long winded way of saying: this holiday season give your loved ones the book they’ve been craving. Happy Holidays!