Angels! Yeah, we've heard you up there, what's up? (short story!!)

Angels! Yeah, we’ve heard you up there, what’s up?

A Christmas Story. By Peter Battle Biles

We draw close to the water on the shore…look! Do I spy minnows ‘neath the ice? Life teems within winter’s sombrero after all, suggesting an early spring. But evil lurks. The fallen wizard makes his wretched way along the bank, surveying the clouds that gather to the north at his command, draws his staff over his head, and intelligently cries out: “Ayyyyahhh!” The fallen wizard enchants many a gullible soul at this time of year and likes to pocket ‘em as he can, devil blast him, though some of the villagers hold out hope for his redemption. If he’s such an old fart now, such a Scrooge and Grinch and Saruman combined, then who could imagine the virtue he’d display at his repentance? God only knows, and the folks can only pray, insofar as they’re eluding his spells and devilry.

“Who will transpire in my domain?” calls out our sensitive villain, investigating a cluster of vultures in a tree above him. “What poor soul shall I teach to be mine apprentice?”

We proceed to see a lad of not thirty years old stumble through the brambles drinking coffee that probably went cold half an hour ago. The buffoon is lost, it’s obvious, by the way he is perusing the shoreline with a rolling eye and open mouth. The wizard ducks into the bushes with a fall as dramatic as Cleopatra’s swoon, and lo! it appears he was never there at all. Our poor fellow continues to stumble along this dim path, a Dante with no Vergil to guide him, into the icy under pits of a hellish kingdom. Well, we can see he means no harm. He’s just out to look at the sunset as it starts to hollowly dip on the horizon, just about the trees. The wizard’s stormy spell is put on pause and he’s fooled into thinking that this is a tranquil scene. A real Christmas miracle, a melancholy still portrait of his backyard woods. What business did a wicked magician have snooping about and causing mischief anyway? He’s an unwanted blight, but lord of the terrain nonetheless, so we’ll have to put up with him, hedge or high water.

The oaf’s name you may already know from previous episodes involving vague pilgrimages of character and hopeless searches for romantic love: Josiah, surname not important. He’s been the Christmas victim and its unlikely hero in his multiple tangles with the forces of anti-holiday cheer and good grace, and you may suspect that he will be again. How many times has a certain Christmas elf come to his rescue, or his wit and humor given him a timely return and rescued him from the wiles of demons and darkness? Can he repeat his hard won luck or can’t he? Well, on Josiah goes, assuming that this kingdom of peace and good tidings is his for the keeping this Christmas, when, just as he lingers on the shore and smiling upon a V of ducks as they descend upon what they expect to be water, the fallen wizard leaps from the underbrush with his war cry and proceeds to smack our subject upon the head with his enchanted staff.

“A boofen be upon ye!” he screeches as Josiah is left dazed. “Boofen” is wizardish for “a real bout of nonsense be packed into your cranium” in case you were wondering, and unfortunately more folks in the world are “boofened” than we’d like to accept. But given our dear Josiah wasn’t already disposed to much savvy, it’s a shame that he got such a clout, and I think he deserves our undivided attention and compassion for the remainder of his painful episode.

“What harks me so!” Josiah cries, holding his head in pain and turning to face his nemesis.

“My apprentice you shall be, until my reign of all things gloomy and lame be upon thee!” our wizard claims, one impressively muscular leg stretched forward, and an arm extended towards the heavens in needless melodramatic poise.

“Be mine subject, and let thee tarry not in doing my bidding, thou servant mine! Thou have stumbled into the trap, and Christmas shall not be thine!” For a second Josiah wanted to congratulate the wizard on his exception ability to rhyme in ordinary speech, but then stopped himself, thinking that of course that superior race of beings would practice such linguistic intricacies. So he said nothing.

“Ah, nothing to say! Very good. Under my spell you now are. It is now as it should. I will by thy guiding star.”

What this new discipleship would entail, Josiah wasn’t sure, but he realizes he shares a magnetic pull with the wizard’s staff, and as the creature marches forward through the vale, finds that he can do nothing but follow after him like a puppy after its mother.

Ah, now a soliloquy to thee. Our dear Josiah, historically so naïve, though in an eternal search for jurisprudence, now finds himself entangled in a web not easily diffused….this wizard of gargantuan evil has seduced him, and will post-hence see to it that mischief is scored and attributed to Josiah’s account. Can the light of Heaven find him and pluck him from Herod’s murderous grasp? Can a child yet become a man through the fooleries of darkness? Mayhaps what appears a devil’s trap can turn into divine lesson, should Providence permit its unfolding, and we, as watchful audience, go home attentive to our own souls as wrought in grace and protected by grace, but still penetrable by the same woes afflicted upon our luckless Josiah….may we tread carefully in these woodlands dimly lit!

Now, back to our bounded pair and their unholy union….the fallen wizard does lead Josiah farther through the woods until they appear on a wooden dock overlooking a lake, upon which now the ducklings are scuffling over the ice.

“Ah Josiah!” cries the wizard, a look of agony and glory upon his bearded countenance. “You who are an abominable lover of this insufferable holiday in which Jesu is regarded by man to be the Son of God…what buffoonery do you expect me to adopt next? It is my intention now to lead you into a place of general enlightenment and good taste. Now, prithee, foolish one, do you now profess this Jesus was born into the world to save thee, and do you affirm a mood of cursed joy and good cheer?”

“Well,” our beloved Josiah mumbles, eyes squinted in intense concentration. “Were the wording more simple, I’d answer that, but methinks that yes, Jesus came to earth to save the world.”

“So doctrinally simple thou art!” our wizard bemoans. “Were that you were one of rationalistic enterprise, one of scientific leanings, one of facts, then you would declare it all a thing of mere sentiment and goo and occasion for eggnog but naught else. Bah! Come along.”

Josiah, rather cleverly I might add, wonders why this old wizard was jabbering about science and facts while holding a magic staff and summoning the clouds to pour snow and sleet abundant upon all outdoor Christmas carolers. But he fears this might induce him into a rage, and what would come of our beloved oaf then?

“Snow and hail travail thee!” the wizard yells. “A curse of cold weather bite thy noses!!”

“You like winter then?” Josiah pipes up, supposing he might try and make conversation.

“Humbug, as one of your Christmas villains would say! Winter, darkness, the pool of nothing when the earth lays still in its silent abode….a great light threatens to shine, but in these here woodlings I desire peace and quiet. No disruption! No fuss.”

“Well,” says Josiah. “I guess that’s...understandable.”

“Aha! Thou art swaying under my devices, youthling.”

And it is true. The longer Josiah proceeds to follow this wizard along, the safer he feels with him than without, since the woods and everything around are looking darker and gloomier all the time. ‘Tis better to have company than nothing in strange bodings such as these. But our be-spelled hero keeps a nimble foot all the same and utters a prayer ‘neath his parched lips to the Lord above, since in his dullness he has forgotten to drink water that day in preference to a French press his father had conveniently made at 10:30 a.m. Speaking of family and home, aren’t they missing him over there? Ah, perhaps not. Perhaps they, the undeluded, are so caught up in the Christmas cheer and the aroma of ginger snaps and hummelplumps and cocoadumps that they’d scarcely noted the elder lad’s prolonged absence. But what of the livestock? Would the cats and chickens form a brigade of resistance? So there, you see the plight our poor brother is in.

The wizard happens to see a silhouette or a certain tree against the sky and remarks, “Ooh, such contrast!” He flips out an iPhone and proceeds to snap a few pics of the scene, later remarking that he liked to keep himself artsy on Instagram so people would mistake his wizardry for true art.

“Good of you,” Josiah mumbles.

“A good way to fight your horrid Christmas cheer is to give so many nostalgic captions on social media that it is reduced to pretty much emotional hogwash,” declares the scoundrel, posting the photo and typing underneath, Ah yes, may light shineth against the dark! Dark and light and light and dark. Good and bad and bad and good. Would and could and wooding and pudding. Christmas is great!

When he reads it out loud, Josiah dost think the caption to be nonsense, but gram-worthy nonetheless, so he gives it his recommendation and along they traverse.

“Can I ask where we’re going?” Josiah asks.

“You mayn’t!” And that’s that.

Our Josiah finds himself longing for a slab of honey ham and cider and maybe a loaf of shepherd’s bread too, for this was promised him later that evening from his dear mother, but clearly the possibility is looking grim at the moment. They must be a mile away from home! Josiah suspects the fallen wizard has some devious intent in this pilgrimage, and it is no Christmas tree hunt, though a bounty of healthy cedars abound in their periphery. No, clearly the wizard is up to something else, and soon he finds out exactly what this is.

“Now you are so in love with holiday spirits, a true seeker! Trying to find out ‘what it all means.’ Well, fool, I now bring you to your answer. Look! This is what Christmas is all about.” Josiah finds himself looking at a trash can with some catalogues sticking out from under the lid. They are standing at the end of someone’s driveway, it seems, and the foul smell of eggnog and old hambone lingers.

“I don’t understand,” Josiah mutters lamely.

“The catalogues! The waste! The goodies and the hambone! This is what Christmas is all about to you people. Stuff stuff stuff!”

“But what about good news of Christmas tidings? Of good cheer and gaiety?”

“’Tis but riff raff in the wind, young miser. When push comes to shove, thine people will storm the supermarkets and stuff out the stores. Now you see why Christmas is a joke, I presume?”

Josiah, who is quite gullible indeed, gives a long sigh, as is his habit when he is in deep distress, and says, “Maannn. Maybe you right. Is Christmas naught but the getting of fuzzy toys and candy cane gobbers and lots of maple waffles and many truffles? I’m afraid it ‘tis so.”

“Many truffles for you to stuff into thy gaping mouth. And cocoa lumps and sugar chumps too.” Josiah refrains from asking what a sugar chump is due to his remarkably low spirits; if we zoom into his face we can see the despondency etched into his pensive eyes. He seems to be struggling to know what to say next.

“I…I still believe.”

“Believe in what, thou oafling?”

“In….ahh, I don’t know! Thine spell has spellcasted my cranium! Get thee gone, wicked spirit! Christmas must be more than you suppose.”

“Thy cranium is a stubborn mule!” the fallen wizard fumes. “What does it take to dissuade your appetite for this wretched season? Year after year you return to the gates of Christmas begging for a morsel of this so-called good cheer and tidings. Bah!”

“What have you against good cheer and tidings? Against the baby child at the breast of the virgin? Heaven’s sake, what have you against truffles?”

“Thou wouldn’tst understand! Truffles are for the birds!”

And then, lo, the hammer strikes. Summoning all his powers into the mere staff in his hands, the fallen wizard grasps for the sky and mutters terrible words that we ought not repeat on the page, and then directs the tip of the staff towards the defenseless Joe, crying “Aya ama!!” to release the fury of his spell. Our helpless Josiah is thrown back into the briars, releasing a pathetic whimper that only the field mouse in the leaves can detect. We see him there, unmoving, perhaps deceased? “Now thy dull head is full of mine power!” cries the tyrant. “I have annihilated thee!”

And we the onlookers do have pity for this roasted paste upon the ground, a ruined soul under the spell of a dark shade. A shade of what? I know not or how.

Mayhaps his heart is two ticks too foul;

mayhaps his undergarments are pinched too tight at the bowel.

Mayhaps he never was right; alas, can no love heal such a blight?

Ah, now a soliloquy again to you, dear reader. What beseemest to be the demise of this clueless Josiah may be indeed the inklings of his resurrection, or shall we say Christmas birth? For indeed, sometimes annihilation must precede the new life that is to come, that we may utter the hymns of eventide anew and join in with our brothers in song with no eye towards hiding and no tongue towards lying!

Hark! What should we hear at such a desperate hour but the soft tongues of carolers on the wind as they gather round yon cedar? Though the air is stale with the crackle of Josiah’s spellbound body, still they gather like Whos in Whoville and sing their praises to the newborn Son! At this Josiah’s limp body doth stir with an energy beyond the power of the fallen wizard’s spell; his eyes open and he leans himself on his elbows with a yet befuddled look on his pale face.

“Stay down, thou beast!” the wizard cries. “Let me take care of these carolers meself.” Waving the staff ‘round his headed, the wizard opens his mouth wide and even rotates his hips in a way that shouldn’t be confused with a grotesque variation of the hula dance, and bellows, “Snow and hail blast yon carolers with a wrath unbeknownst to man!” But what should happen at the command but the opposite of his intention! The wizard looks in horror as the staff heats up in his hands, powerless to do his will as the cooing of the carolers raises into a song of exaltation: Angels, we have heard on high!

Oh shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why your joyous strains prolong?
What the gladsome tidings be
Which inspire your heavenly song?

Gloria in excelsis Deo
Gloria in excelsis Deo

Come to Bethlehem and see
Him whose birth the angels sing
Come adore on bended knee
Christ the Lord the newborn King.

“Aha!” our now valiant Josiah proclaims. “Hear now what the singers cajole! Christ the newborn king, not your rationalistic sting! Him whose birth the angels sing! Not your consumeristic fling! Shall we join them now who doth so carol? Shall we join in they who doth so herald?”

“Mine staff has broken, I am deceased!” the charred wizard weeps. “Ah, my magic is desisted. Let us gather round yon fools and see what they doth cherish that makes them so cheery-eyed. Mayhaps they’ve a power not of smiting and thunder and cloud, a strength not made of boofens and clouts…but…” And here our fallen Ahab does weep a single tear into the ocean of his heart. “A gentle power you humans do call love….a humility not well understood by the powers of the gloom nor of the scientist’s reason nor the shopper’s insanity….ah! Come thou simple minded Josiah. Mayhaps we have chanced upon our soul’s rest, the both of us.”

And so, a final soliloquy to thee, dearest ones. Off they go, spellbound no longer, to join the happy circle of brothers and sisters and see what these good tidings truly are indeed: a child is given for the redemption of all, the root of Jesse and the Word of God, the Christ among us. May the Providence which governs the Kingdom of the Heavens visit those who have long lived in darkness and depression, for on them a great light hath shined! Amen and amen.

The end