Tis the season to be jolly, as well as busy! To help you feel festive, I’ve written a Christmas take on the famous tea-party scene in Alice in Wonderland.
It was really fun to write 😀
But first a thought on how not to approach Christmas. (If you don’t feel like a short dose of seriousness Scroll straight down to the Alice image. ⬇️ )
I recently read a (thinly disguised) memoir by an author who went to the same university as I did. She also enrolled for English, like I did. Only one year earlier as it happens. The excerpt from her book below reminds me, vividly, of why I stopped English in second year, even though I love language and literature. I actually stopped writing creatively about the same time.
Here goes:
In 1986 critics applying Theory to texts liked to cast themselves as torturers… The critic was obliged to ‘probe’ and ‘interrogate’ the text in order to make it yield the story it was concealing. The critic always already knew every detail of that story but it was necessary to make the text confess. Applying pressure to soft, secret places, the critic exposed fake oppositions, crude essentialisms, bourgeois hegemony, totalizing mechanisms, humanist teleologies, squalid repressions, influential aporias and many more textual fragilities. The text bucked and shrieked under the critics ministrations, but the critic was merciless. Things always ended the same way: the text came apart, divulging its hidden significance. That was The Story Under The Story. When it was revealed and the text was in pieces, the critic had won.
Michelle de Kretser, theory & practice, p43
Free Christmas Reading Offers
I honestly don’t recommend theory & practice as Christmas reading — too much post-modernist gloom. Even though Michelle de Kretser writes brilliant prose. Let me suggest one of the free reads below instead! There are a couple of my stories in this offer too:
Alison’s Christmas Take on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
Christmas in Wonderland
Alice was a little sorry to find herself back at the tea-table under the tree, where the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and the March Hare were still dining.
The Mad Hatter held his watch to his ear. He looked at it, gave it a little shake, then looked at it again.
‘The tea has melted the butter,’ he said hopefully. ‘It’s nearly Christmas!’
Alice thought this was nonsensical, until she remembered that the Hatter’s watch was supposed to give the date. Ever since the Mad Hatter had been accused of killing time, Time had been vengefully capricious and unreliable. The March Hare’s repair attempts on the watch had only gummed up its works. The tea-table was stuck at six o’clock. The Dormouse was still asleep, and Alice noted there had been no time to wash the dishes.
‘Can you tell me which way it is to the garden?’ she asked.
‘This is your second visit, isn’t it?’ said the Hatter.
Alice didn’t see what that had to do with it. ‘Yes.’
The Hatter nodded. His hat wobbled and nearly fell into the tea things. ‘First you must have something to eat,’ he said.
The trio were now several places further around the table than they had been before, and there wasn’t a clean cup and saucer to be seen. Alice decidedly did not want to join them at tea. She wanted to get into the elusive garden she had seen through the little door.
‘Have a tart.’ The March Hare passed her a monogrammed plate.
Alice was fond of anything sweet, so she accepted the dish. She found it did indeed contain tarts, or at least pastry cases – but they had no jam inside them.
‘Oh. No, thank you.’ Alice put the plate back on the cluttered table, on the damp patch where the Hare had upset the milk jug.
‘You won’t get into the garden unless you eat something,’ the Mad Hatter said.
‘Why not?’ Alice asked.
‘Because you must have repassed, before you can reach the garden. That’s physics for you.’
‘Pardon?’ Alice didn’t understand either physics or the Hatter.
‘Repassed,’ the Hatter said, sweeping his arm over the table and back, catching his sleeve on the teapot lid. ‘To go past once again.’ The lid clattered onto the table. ‘Also: a meal. A quantity of food served.’
‘But they’re not the same thing,’ Alice protested. ‘I haven’t time for this.’
‘Shh!’ The March Hare warned. ‘You must mind the time. Or Christmas will never come.’
The Mad Hatter gestured again, this time sending the teapot lid flying off the table. ‘Take a seat.’
Alice checked the chair. The upholstery was stained, but seemed to be dry. She perched on the edge of the seat, and wondered whether an empty pastry case was as plain and crumbly as it looked. In the centre of the table there was now a Christmas pudding, topped with a sprig of holly. Alice didn’t remember it being there before. The pudding appeared very old – so dry that it had cracked from top to bottom.
‘We need some entertainment,’ the March Hare suggested. ‘A song or a poem. That might pass the Time.’
‘It could do the trick,’ the Mad Hatter said, checking his watch again.
The March Hare nudged the Dormouse, who was snoring softly.
The Dormouse snuffled and mumbled, ‘Her turn.’
Alice’s previous recitals in Wonderland hadn’t come out quite right. But perhaps a song or a poem was preferable to the tea-table’s offerings, and would pass the time sufficiently so she could move on. Or Christmas would arrive, which would be lovely.
She folded her hands and straightened her shoulders as she had been taught. Then she began:
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house –’
‘Why the night before?’ the Hare interrupted querulously. ‘Why not Christmas?’
‘Just like birthdays,’ the Mad Hatter said lugubriously. ‘And jam. Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but no jam today. And never Christmas.’
‘Never?’ said Alice, who was sure it had been Christmas at some point.
‘Always the night before,’ the Dormouse muttered with its eyes closed. ‘Or the day after.’
‘Boxing Day,’ the Hatter said sadly. ‘All boxes and no gifts.’
That sounded like a sorry state of affairs, not Christmas as Alice thought she knew it. She began the poem again.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.’‘I object!’ cried the Dormouse, opening one eye. ‘Speciesism!’
The March Hare’s ears twitched sympathetically, and it looked down its long nose at Alice.
‘This isn’t a court of law,’ she pointed out.
But the Mad Hatter picked up the cake slice and rapped it on the table so hard that all the cutlery jumped. ‘Objection overruled. Not even a mouse…’ he prompted.
Alice felt slightly guilty. The Dormouse was snuffling in its sleep again, which did seem to suggest that the poem may have misunderstood the activity level of his species. Unless a Dormouse and a mouse weren’t the same creature. Either way, if the party at the tea-table weren’t going to give her directions to the garden, Alice liked the idea of arriving at Christmas instead.
So she went on.
‘No stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
Because hoping in Santa is like walking on air.As soon as the words were out, Alice knew the poem had gone off-track. It sounded right; it tripped along clickety-clack like a poem; but the original meaning had gone awry.
‘Reindeer don’t fly, and angels don’t sing
Who knows what bad news the new year will bring?’Alice’s listeners looked uneasy.
Like the jam tarts, something was missing from this version of Christmas. Alice continued in the hope that the poem might turn a corner and improve its ways. Instead it gathered speed inexorably, like a train heading for derailment:
‘The saint on the sleigh’s just an overweight elf
His red cheeks aren’t jolly – they’re a sign of poor health
All those stories are ancient and therefore not true
So here’s to no Christmas for me and for you!’Alice was quite upset with the direction the poem had taken. She wished she’d never opened her mouth. She felt a large tear well up and run down her cheek. It dripped onto the plate in front of her with a plink.
‘There, there,’ said the March Hare. ‘It’s not so bad as all that.’
But it was. Alice wished it was Christmas – the Christmas stockings bulging, the blue brandy flames licking joyfully over the pudding, and the baby Jesus in his manger. Another tear fell on her plate.
‘Have a handkerchief.’ The Mad Hatter offered her the same napkin that had been used to blot the milk after the Dormouse’s accident. Alice declined. She knew about crying over spilled milk, and wiped her cheek with her fingers instead.
The Hare cut a preposterously large piece of pudding. ‘Have a slice,’ he offered. ‘It’s full of Christmas spirit.’
Alice sniffed. ‘It’s very old,’ she said.
The Hare pulled off a shrivelled black morsel that may once have been fruit, and chewed on it thoughtfully. ‘No, it’s currant.’
The pudding did not look appetising, but Alice remembered the surprising effects of the cake and the mushroom. Who knew what the pudding might do? She accepted the slice, and ate a spoonful. It did taste a little dry at first. But the taste got sweeter, richer and spicier the more she ate. To test the pudding’s effect, she put a hand on top of her head. She didn’t seem to have grown or shrunk.
On her second mouthful she heard a tinkling sound. It must have been the Hatter stirring his tea. On her third mouthful she thought she heard singing, but maybe it was the wheezing of the Dormouse. On the fourth mouthful, she noticed it had begun to snow, even though the grass was still green. She didn’t feel cold.
Curious! She thought.
She caught one of the snowflakes with her spoon. It was surprisingly large, with intricate edges like the ones her family cut out of paper at Christmastime. Tiny, ornate letters shimmered in the spokes of ice. Alice turned the snowflake around to read them — love, joy, peace, Noel…
As she wondered about this, Alice heard a cheerful laugh high above her.
She looked up. Passing over her head were the runners and under-carriage of a sleigh, pulled by a team of deer. Their hooves were galloping on thin air. As she watched, the team dived into a figure of eight. The sleigh twisted sideways. Inside was Santa, holding onto his bright red hat, and yelling ‘Ho! Ho!’ as his vehicle banked precipitously.
A spray of snowflakes from the sleigh runners coated the dirty dishes on the tea-table with shimmering white. Startled, the Dormouse shook himself, and twitched his tail. He opened both his eyes until they were wide, round and shining.
The March Hare licked a snowflake off the end of his nose and crunched it appreciatively. Beside Alice, the Hatter checked his watch. ‘Mercy me!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Christmas!’
The sound of singing came closer, wafting through the air like the richness of spice.
Curiouser and curiouser, Alice thought. Christmas had arrived. She was exceedingly glad.
© Alison Lloyd 2025
Let’s not unravel meaning like the English lit critics. Let’s celebrate Christmas — peace, joy and holiness — not debunk it.
[Historical note: if you’re a stickler for accuracy, which is fine with me – then yes, Alice could have known the poem. It was first published in 1823, 4 decades before Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and reprinted many times.]
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!A Visit from St Nicholas, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, 1823
Best wishes to you and yours until next year!
I like literary theory, but I don't take it seriously. Merry Christmas to you and yours!