--"a primitive Christmas Carol," obviously a take-off of the Charles Dickens classic, is respectfully dedicated to the pie-and-jam primitive, grasswire, in the hopes that grasswire will enjoy this remembrance of her now-gone best friend on Skins's island, the hippywife primitive, Mrs. Alfred Packer.
This story follows the same pattern as the original of Dickens, with "staves" rather than chapters, of which there were three in the original, and will be three in this, as franksolich guides hippywife through Christmases past, present, and to come, with the, uh, inevitable denouement.
A "stave," as the word was used in olden times, is a verse of a song.
(http://i1056.photobucket.com/albums/t374/primitiveland/Christmas3.jpg)