Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas

In this breezy turn‑of‑the‑century tale the reader is invited into a wildly unconventional Christmas celebration organized by a flamboyant Texan colonel. He rents a massive auditorium for a thousand‑dollar fee and opens it to anyone who can pay, turning the holiday into a chaotic public spectacle. The narrator frames the story through a pair of candid letters the colonel writes to his wife, mixing self‑deprecating humor with absurd anecdotes about solitary shipwrecks, desert islands, and misadventures in the wild West.

The letters sketch the colonel’s own mythic past—sharpened by exaggeration, peppered with near‑lynchings, and haunted by lonely Christmas nights in bustling cities. As the crowd gathers for the upcoming repeat of the event, the author observes the strange reception and the way ordinary people respond to a promise of communal merriment. While the narrative never rushes to a tidy resolution, it offers a witty commentary on the human longing for connection during the holiday season.