The First Christmas Story

This is the true account of events that happened in these very lands many years ago in the time of our fathers.  All across the land, the settled and the nomadic alike were outraged at the king’s insistence upon a census.  The king of the land was Elvis, who fought many wars against pretenders to his throne and united his people under the banner of commercial rock and roll.

Prime Minister Herod, the puppet dictator of the foreign occupying forces, was charged with the onerous task of inducing all subjects to travel to their home towns for a census.  A poster campaign cheerfully invited “citizens” to “Stand up and be counted!”  (A rejected version bearing the slogan “If you’re not counted, you don’t count” was later leaked to the press.)

One seemingly-insignificant family of travellers in a hire car made the long journey to Stoke-On-Trent, the land of their forebears.  “It’s a fucking liberty, I never even lived there!”  complained Joe, bitterly.  Weary from driving, he fretted over his pregnant fiancé, Mariah, who chided him gently for his impatience.

At a motorway service station outside the town of Coventry, the Salvation Army sang their traditional winter songs of praise for the solstice.  By way of conversation, one Christian soldier greeted Mariah as she passed, and began to preach to her, saying

“For a boy will born unto you, Oh Mary, who will be King!”

“What, to me?  In Stoke?!”

“Yes, in a humble place.  For this king will not be made by man and will not be a king as men would recognise one. This King will create the Kingdom of God.”

“Oh, right, yeah, OK. Happy Christmas then.”  Said the bemused mother-to-be, for she did not understand the truth of the wise missionary’s words.

Arriving in Stoke, late at night, the young couple could not find shelter, for every travel lodge was full.  At door after door they were turned away, for it was the night of the winter solstice, and the town was full of pagan revellers, all drunk and pissed up on booze.

“Wa-as-salaam alaikum” said a bearded man who answered the door at one independent guesthouse, the seventeenth place the weary travellers had sought accommodation.

“Alaikum-as-salaam”, Mariah answered.  “Please, Sir, we come seeking shelter on this cold night, for I am with child and my partner is pissy and in absolutely no mood.”

“I regret that we are also full, as is everywhere on this most holy night.  But I am a muslim, obliged by my religion to accept guests and treat them well in my home.  Come, let me make up a bed for you in our spare room, which my daughters use as a design studio.”

They followed, thanking the innkeeper for his kindness, noting mournfully that their fellow pagans had not seen fit to offer such welcoming kindnesses.

“A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country”, said the man, with an enigmatic grin, before adding:  “There’s a toilet on the landing.”

Now, in those uncertain times, many predicted the end of the world and appeared certain that the End Times were coming.  Many of the rappers of the day talked about the Y2K disease, which threatened to cause clocks to run backwards and computers fail and make e’ybody lose they minds.

Meanwhile, a baby was born to a refugee on a boat at sea and no one gave a fuck.

Watching stories on the news in the innkeeper’s living room, the young couple were struck by the fragility of their own situation, and felt thankful for the kindness of the stranger who had taken them in.  Bitter ironies were the flavour of the day, and Mariah came to appreciate their struggle as part of a bigger picture.  Joe had no time for politics, but agreed loudly when the innkeeper opined “This is the reality of late capitalism; war is an economic phonemenon, made inevitable by a global weapons market and the power structures that maintain it.  Refugees are the lucky ones who managed to escape the wars, and they come here and are reviled.  And the religious people say nothing about it and are instead concerned with other people’s sex life.”

“But those who know”, the innkeeper continued, a strange light glowing behind his head, “understand that in the Kingdom of God, we will speak without tongues, hear without ears and see without eyes.  No weapon formed against us shall prosper.  Verily I say unto you: I have a Master’s degree in Folklore and Mythology, and am working on my PhD thesis in Contemporary Religious Studies.”

Mariah’s girlchild was born just hours later, on the floor in the kitchen of the innkeeper’s home in Stoke.  And that girlchild grew up to be a person of great import.  Instead of leading her people to freedom, paying the “ultimate sacrifice”, like all other messiahs and revolutionaries, this leader showed people everywhere how to be free, not just freed. 

This legend has mysteries for those who will find them.

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The writer of this recovered document was thought to be a census worker in the Midlands of Great Britain in 2001.  The “ominous signs and portents” probably refers to the pre-millenial tension in the western world concerning fears of the infamous “Y2K” bug.  Historians now believe the feared pandemic was more myth than reality, with several sources from the time seeming to confirm this.

The towns of Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent are also thought to be mythical, a trope used to signify the mundane.  No famous or noteworthy people were said to come from there, although everybody liked The Specials, who claimed to be from Coventry as a clever marketing ploy, using the same logic of pride in the ordinary, the unexpected bloom of beautiful flowers in ugly and unwelcoming environments.

And that is why today, at Christmas, we celebrate by traipsing joylessly to our dismal home towns to re-enact the perilous journeys made by so many of our ancestors.