The following are examples of authors using parody of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas to make fun of the idiosyncrasies of the places they live. Here, Santa’s reindeer are reimagined as moose or named after the Founding Fathers. The specificity of these changes makes the stories appealing for lovers of the original poem and the regional audience. While regional parodies make fun of both Moore’s poem and the authors’ community, it’s not done maliciously, nor are they explicitly written with the intent to educate the reader. Instead, they could be considered tongue-in-cheek homages to places and practices that not everyone is aware of. 

It can be argued that the reason these versions are parodies is that they were created by white people and feature only white characters, hereby making the stakes of (mis)representation quite low. As the Nancy H. Marshall collection shows, there already is an abundance of those retellings of the poem, so a badly penned one can just disappear in the mix. While versions by, for example, Native authors do not have the same luxury.

The Night Before Christmas in Newfoundland (1985)

The Virginia Night Before Christmas (2005)

A Modern Version of the Night Before Christmas (1932)