Nanny then reminds her that it is Christmas Day and hurries her off to open the presents that are under the tree. We'll have Christmas punch with Nanny and give Eloise her toys.'Īnd when Eloise wakes up on Christmas day Santa had come and gone and she imagines that she can see the tail lights of Santa's sleigh through the trees in Central Park. So Nanny takes her by the ankles and carries her off to bed where she and Weenie immediately flake out because 'some of us were rawther tired'.Įloise dreams of plum pudding with extra cream, reindeers with sunglasses skating on the stars and Santa chuckling and saying 'Dash on to The Plaza my lovely boys. But Nanny eventually tires of all these antics and suggests bed but Eloise is not in favour of it. Eloise then flits around doing some carolling of her own and she is joined in her dance antics by Skipperdee and Weenie.Īfter an hour long chat with her mother 'long distance from the Mediterranean' Eloise gets up to her antics once more because as she says, 'I usually walk around quite a bit or so thinking of a way to stay up hawlf the night'.

Then Eloise gets up to all her tricks again before she joins Nanny as the latter plays 'We Three Kings of Orient Are' on the piano Eloise accompanies her by banging a spoon on a silver dish. They put up the Christmas tree in their suite and fill it with 'Ornaments big and bright and all of these sparkling icicles and twirling balls of white'. Blow music of trinkles and drinkles of glass there's Christmas everywhere.'Ī plan of The Plaza charts Eloise's progress through it as she runs, leaps, skibbles, zapps and zimbers around while Nanny tries to organise the Christmas decorations. Cut from this somewhat idyllic scene to Eloise dashing around the place doing a variety of tricks and singing a silly song that goes something like 'Fa la la la fa la la lolly tingledy here and there.

The story begins quite promisingly on Christmas Eve with a blizzard raging outside and Eloise lounging in front of a blazing log fire with her Nanny, Skipperdee her turtle and Weenie her dog at The Plaza. As Hilary Knight's illustrations are excellent that would be unfair although Kay Thompson's text is at times rather wishy-washy and banal and at other times quite amusing. It could be said that 'Eloise at Christmastime' falls between two stools but that would perhaps be being a little too unkind for the literal meaning of the phrase usually implies that the object fails to fit into either of two categories.

Eloise at christmas time book