Hello there.
It’s Christmas Eve (babe), and I’m sat in my living room in Bristol, preparing for “that most pleasant of activities, the celebration of Christmas”, thus The Snowman is on the telly and I’m wearing a tasteful but definitely festive jumper and there’s a tree and stockings. It’s a bigger deal this year, because I moved in with my partner recently, she has two sons so it’s a whole new version of a family Christmas for me. I’m really excited. And honestly? I don’t think I can remember a time when I was happier, at least as a grown up. Who knew?
Every year I try and write a Christmas story for my newsletter. Here’s last years (I never did go back to this novella idea), and one from 2020 (I must have skipped 2021?). This year’s has at its heart a dark little idea I had when thinking about the mechanics of Santa Claus. Every house in one night? How would that work possibly work. So I worked out how long it would take to deliver to every house in the UK, accounting for moving between cities and gaps for sleep. It would be 21 years, more or less, give or take. That was the jumping off point. See what you think.
Oh … I just looked up at the screen and Christmas has been RUINED.
Merry Christmas!
Marc
Upcoming live shows and tour dates
The Magic of Terry Pratchett 2024 Tour
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Other gigs
LEICESTER COMEDY FESTIVAL
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Stuff I’ve written & done this month
Romcoms, elves… and Batman: Here’s the best Christmas movies to stream in 2023 (Big Issue)
Doctor Who Christmas Special — The Church on Ruby Road Review (HeyUGuys)
The surprising glam rock roots of your favourite Christmas No 1 (The Independent)
Deck the halls with hits and follies: The greatest Christmas albums of 2023, ranked (Big Issue)
PODCAST APPEARANCE: Bah Humbug with Helen O’Hara – Santa Claus The Movie
Short Story: A Slice of Christmas
It was a dark night. It had been for a long time. Though, thinking about it, nights generally are. Not stormy, thankfully, because that would have been weird in the time slice, and an utter pain in the breaks, but drizzly. Cold enough to need a coat, but mild enough so that, occasionally, you have to take the coat off. Then put it back on again a few minutes later. Easily the most annoying weather condition. And you had to have the coat, anyway. It was the uniform.
I was 45 when I entered the time slice. They didn’t let you do it when you were younger. They wanted to make sure you’d had a bit of life behind you first. It seemed only fair. Technically I still was 45, I supposed. In the purely temporal sense. I looked down at the skin on the back of my hand, like an old paper bag from the green grocer. They were my grandfather’s hands, now. I remember the first time I looked at my own hands and saw my grandfather’s hands. Somewhere around Birmingham, I supposed. Through the natural course of things, my hands had aged and become my grandfather’s hands, and I hadn’t noticed it happening. In the real yesterday they had been mine. Now they were the hands I remembered studying as they showed me how to tie a bootlace or sand the surface of pine. Dry hands, swollen knuckles.
The old boy had done two Christmases. The only one of us, apparently, ever to do so. Everyone had said he was mad, that it was too risky at his age. No-one knows what happens if you die in the slice. You can’t go in after someone. It doesn’t work like that. But he’d emerged, the next morning, exhausted, triumphant. He must have been knocking on the door of ninety. He’d had to take it slow, he told us. Conserve his energy. But he’d done it. He’d completed the night. He died not long afterwards. There’d been a lot of quiet anger among his children and grandchildren, though it was mixed with pride. We could have had him for another 30 years. But he said it was about the job. It was supposed to be my uncle’s turn, but he had broken down and refused to go. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t do the sacrifice. It was too much. And it was. It is. But the family does it. Because we always have. No-one else was ready, so grandfather stepped up. He’d done it last year, he said. The youngest ever. And he was damn well going to do it this year too. Half of his life, lost in the slice.
No-one else knows how the toys get there. It’s one of the great mysteries of the world. They just always have. Every year. Every house. Just a couple. Hand made and simple toys, nothing flashy or fancy, nothing a child would actually ask for. But they treasure them all the same. A wooden soldier. A train. Small and beautiful and neatly wrapped. No other country has this — it’s a British thing. A source of great national pride. Sure the Americans pretend they have it, but it’s just tricks and traditions over there. Most country’s do that now. But for the British? The real deal. Father Christmas comes every year.
And they have tried everything to catch us. To work out how it’s done. CCTV, trip wires, weird quantum instruments. Staying awake all night. Everything. And they never do. The toys just appear. Every once in a while, just for the fun of it, we’ll break the slice. Slip back into realtime and let ourselves be seen. Just a glimpse. If we think it’s safe. We’re gone before anyone can properly work us out. Sometimes it makes the papers the next morning, which is always nice. It keeps it all going.
They think it’s magic, and I suppose it is. In the Arthur C. Clarke sense, anyway. We have the trick. Every member of my family has the trick. We can go into the slice. It’s just a thing we can do. But there’s no other magic, really. There’s a couple of factories across the country, and a large truck, and training in motor mechanics and basic first aid, and off you go, between cities and towns, back and forth, filling up the truck, dropping off one by one. Fill up again. The logistics are complicated, but we’ve been doing this for a long time, and technology has helped. You train for years and wait for your turn, and then the sun goes down and you go into the slice. Droplets hang in the air and sparkle. Walls and doors only exist if you want them too. Physical matter is optional. Something to do with atoms, apparently. Something something quantum. The moment exists as long as you want it to. And it’s your moment. No-one else can exist in it. No time. No anything. Except inside your head. And, regrettably, inside your body.
And sometimes, in the long, lonely years of your turn, you ask yourself why. Why bother? Why us? Why me? Dad calls it the family curse. Everyone else calls it the “gift” or the “duty” or the “job”. One Christmas each. We don’t share it. We volunteer. We do the job. We gladly give the time. Because it’s sacred. As far as we know, it’s the only remaining piece of magic in the entire universe that science or maths hasn’t shattered with logic. With reality. We are the custodians of the last piece of pure wonder anywhere in the world. The last tiny droplet of enchantment left. As long as that exists, as long as every child knows that they’ll wake up one morning of the year with their own little miracle, then the world remains a place of infinite possibility and wonder. They hold that with them. Forever. It’s our family’s gift to the rest of humanity. Like I said. It’s sacred.
But sometimes, as the long, still years go by, in the dark, as you take on the task alone, as you weave through the statue crowds and pass by the warm families, frozen in their little moment of joy, my god it’s hard. You grow old. You keep the truck maintained. You break the slice just long enough to order hot food, or sometimes, just because you need to hear a real voice; and you do it as quickly as you possibly can and then take it with you, the food or the sound or humanity, into the next nanosecond. Back into the timeless now. It has to take a single night. No matter how long that night lasts.
I’m nearly done. In every sense of the word. Worn out. Worn through. Thin. Old. There’s miles to go. But not that many now. There’s a mirror in this hallway, and the old man that looks back at me is dirty and exhausted. His beard is matted. His eyes are dulled. Maybe a nap before the next house? Nearly done. Nearly done.
Copyright Marc Burrows 2023