“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Donald declared as he turned from the window. “The Spirits of all Three John McCain’s shall strive within me. I say it on my knees, old McCain; on my knees!”

He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

“The shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!”

He took off his hat and he took off his hair and he hugged them both tightly to his chest.

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy,” cried Donald. “I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

He ran into his Tweeting room and looked all about.

“There’s the door, by which the Ghost of John McCain entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There are the tunnels wherein I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”

“Donald,” the hat said, “you’re crushing me.”

“It’s because I love you, hat, dear hat!” Donald yelled. He twirled around and around until he felt ill.

“I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Donald. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby.”

Running to the window, tried to open it, and set off a security alarm. A Secret Service officer came bustling in.

“What’s to-day!” cried Donald, calling to the Secret Service agent in his best drab suit.

“EH?” returned the agent, with all his might of wonder.

“What’s today, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.

“Today, Mr. President?” replied the agent. “Why, CHRISTMAS DAY!”

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Donald. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course, they can. Of course, they can.”

“Spirits, Mr. President?” asked the confused agent.

“Do you know the McDonald’s in the next street but one, at the corner?” Donald inquired.

“Uh, yes, I guess so,” said the agent, uncertainty dancing in his eyes. He holstered his weapon and lightly fingered his 25th Amendment TASER.

“An intelligent boy!” said Donald. “A remarkable boy! Do we employ all boys as smart as him?” he asked his hat. “Do we?” he asked his hair. The agent backed up warily and did not take his eyes off of Donald.

“Do you know whether they’ve sold the 100 piece McNugget box that had as a Holiday promotion?” asked Donald.

“I’ll… I’ll go check for you, sir,” the agent said, longing to call for his supervisor.

“Go and buy it. Have it send posthaste to Pie and her family!” said Donald.

“Pie, sir?” the agent asked.

“Sarah,” the hair whispered.

“Sarah,” Donald told the agent. “My spokeswoman. Sarah, dear Sarah. Sarah, Plain and Wide.”

“I’ll get right on that, sir,” said the agent, backing out of the Residence.

“Half-a-crown for you if you are quick about it, boy!” Donald said, laughing heartily, and the agent was gone in a flash.

Donald looked at his hair and Donald looked at his hat and said to them both: “We must get ready friends, we have a busy day of legacy building to begin!”

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don’t dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.

He dressed himself in “all in his best,” and at last got out into the White House proper. The workers by this time were pouring forth, filling office even on this Christmas Day.

“The work of the President is never done,” said a gleeful Donald to his hat and his hair.

“Hullo!” he shouted to the secretaries.

“Hullo!” he shouted to the Secret Service agents.

“Hullo!” he shouted to the dogsbodies and factotum scurrying to-and-fro.

Donald hurried into The Oval Office and shut the door behind him. He had calls to make, important calls to make.

“Donald,” asked his hair. “Are you OK?”

“I have never felt better, my beloved follicles,” he said.

Donald pressed a button set into the underlip of his desk and a drawer opened, a drawer he had never opened before. Inside was a phone of deepest red, an old-style phone that could not send Tweets or Crush Candies.

“Donald…” the hat said.

“I shall not succumb to such dark future,” said Donald and he took up the phone. “Hullo!” he shouted into the receiver.

“Mr. President,” a sober young man said. “What are your orders, sir?”

“Scramble the jets, and set sail our ships,” Donald sang. “Wake all our troops, and arm them every one. Ready the drones and cruise missiles. Launch the Space Force and warm their laser cannons. The best Christmas has come, my lad. The best Christmas of all!”

“Y-y-es, sir,” the young man said.

“Assemble the Joint Chiefs!” Donald continued. ”Stiffen John Bolton’s Mustache to a heady rage! Release the Mad Dog from his pleasure cage!”

“Y-y-your orders, sir?”

“Have them all in the Situation Room with all haste! America goes to war!”

Donald hung up the phone and closed the secret drawer and spun around in his office chair with a girlish laugh of pleasure.

“Donald,” the hair said. “Mattis just put in his resignation letter.”

“Jim will stay,” said Donald. “As I keep Faith with him, he will keep Faith with me.”

“And you just had me declare on Twitter the war with ISIS won and a withdrawal of troops from Syria and a drawdown in Afganistan,” the hat said.

“Then back to Twitter, friend hat,” said Donald. “Reverse, regress and revise. Claim we were hacked; call it Facebook’s fault! Or let the egg be on Dorsey’s face–call it a blue checkmark farce!”

“Whatabout…” the hair began.

“And call Pie! Rescue her from her fat family fatal feast! She’ll have much to tell our countrymen as they wake!”

Donald was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to round Sarah, his beloved Pie, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a Warboner, as firm a hawk, and as bloodthirsty a man, as the good old district knew, or any other good old capital, stronghold, or redoubt, in the dark old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough now to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for sake of conflict and death, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. Donald’s own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Donald and his hat and his hair had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Warboner Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas in an America at War as well as man alive or dead or never to be born. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

And so, as Pie observed, around a mouthful of McNuggets: God of War Bless Us, Every One!