God rest ye CS students now, and let nothing you dismay;
The VAX is down and won't be up until the first of May.
The program that was due this morn won't be postponed they say.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

The bearings on the disk are gone, and bits are dropping too;
We found a bug in C and Pascal can't tell false from true,
And now we find that we can't get at Berkeley's 4.2.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

And all you fans of matrix math who would use APL,
You'd find out if the VAX were up it wouldn't work too well.
And if you try, then it'll say that you can go to... well...
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

We just received a call from DEC, they'll send without delay
A system they call RSuX it takes nine hundred k,
The staff committed suicide, we'll bury them today.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

And now more cheery news for you, the network's also dead
You'll have to run your programs on the IBM instead.
The turnaround time is nineteen weeks and only cards are read.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

And now we'd like to say to you before we go away,
We hope the news we brought to you won't ruin your whole day.
You've got another program due tomorrow, by the way.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!


Sung to the tune of "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen." I have seen many variations on this song, some replacing C and Pascal with LISP and ALGOL, and other minor changes. Obviously written during the minicomputer era, when 900k was a lot.