they called him Charles Brickens in poetry

How can the Flintstones have a Christmas special?
How can Cocoa Pebbles have a holiday Sugar Cookie flavour?
How can Fred and Barney act in a stage version of A Christmas Carol
when a Christmas Carol was written in the Eighteen Hundreds while
they live their lives in Stone Caves?

Here’s why, here’s why
the Jetsons are living up in the sky
while The Flintstones are down on the ground
but is the same year.
It is the same year!
They are all in the future, our future
thousands of years after Jesus was born

The Jetsons are the elloi and
the Flintstones are the morlocks
there was a robot war that scorched the Earth
and while the rich rose to into the clouds
the few straggling survivors stuck scrabbling in rocks
slowly rebuilt a patchwork new society on the basis of
the surviving pre-digital records of 1960s America
with atomic mutations that kinda look like dinosaurs
as their stand-in for technology
distrusting the electrical because of the dim cultural memory
of the android holocaust that burnt of most of history
they’re not in the Stone Age
they’re a Modern Stone Age Family
not the original Stone Age but rather
bombed back into it
that’s why the Flintstones have a Christmas special
the celluloid Bing Crosby Bob Hope specials
that remained in the salt caves
are nearly all they have to remember
after the internet died

And don’t even start with the Flintstones Jetsons crossover movie
they weren’t time-traveling to visit each other
they were just teleporting up and down
that was just the lie they told Elroy and Judy
so they wouldn’t rebel and join
the Robopocalypse
that’s how Barney got to play “Bob Cragit”
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas