Decking the Halls, Carlyle Style

6:45 p.m. | Updated

Attention private equity firms: The Carlyle Group just raised the bar on holiday cards.

Coming off a busy 2011, a year in which the firm did billion-dollar deals, took a portfolio company public and filed to go public itself, Carlyle could have been forgiven for taking a year off from yuletide celebrations.

Instead, the private equity firm produced a comedic mockumentary called “Holiday Founders’ Video,” which it will send to its investors on Friday.

The video stars David M. Rubenstein, William E. Conway Jr. and Daniel A. D’Aniello, the firm’s co-founders, in what amounts to a year-end alternative reality exercise.

“I wonder what life would be like for all of us if we hadn’t started Carlyle some 24 years ago?” Mr. Rubenstein says in the video’s opening scene.

In a bit of billionaire role-reversal, the film imagines Mr. Rubenstein, a former senior White House official, as the owner of a lemonade stand, which he runs using the principles of private equity. (You’re groaning, but it’s funny.)

“It’s 50 cents per cup, or you could become an L.P.,” Mr. Rubenstein says to two young would-be customers, as he pitches them “a guaranteed way to make money.”

It also imagines Mr. Conway, who in real life worked as the chief financial officer of the telecommunications company MCI, if he had instead become an operator at one of the company’s call centers. Mr. D’Aniello, who helped secure Carlyle’s 2006 acquisition of Dunkin’ Brands, is imagined working behind the counter at a Dunkin’ Donuts store.

“It shows the founders don’t take themselves too seriously,” said Christopher W. Ullman, a spokesman and in-house whistling expert for the firm.

The video, which features several family members of Carlyle employees, was made with the help of SKDKnickerbocker, a Washington-based firm that has produced political advertisements for the likes of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Dan Malloy, the governor of Connecticut. Parts of the three-minute film were shot last year, according to Mr. Ullman, and the entire thing was finished in time for this year’s holiday season.

The video is remarkable in that it exists at all, since private equity firms – with certain exceptions – are not particularly known for their comedy.

We’re guessing Carlyle’s video was vetted especially hard by its legal team, since under securities law the firm is prohibited from marketing itself in certain ways before its initial public offering.

But if Carlyle’s lawyers decided to let a little good-natured holiday cheer slip through their fun filter – well, we’re not complaining.