rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS CAROL

   Iggy Scrooge walked quickly, hands jammed in the pockets of his black leather jacket. Snow swirled like spastic dancers in the glow of the streetlights. It was the night of December 24th and Iggy was on his way home from his job at Master Harby's Music Store. The distant strains of Christmas songs came from the various homes he passed, causing him to walk faster and curse under his breath.

     "Damned Christmas songs..... artifuckingficial happy bastards...."

     ...and the like. Coming to the door of his studio apartment, he saw that some well-meaning friend had placed a wreath on his door. As he reached to take it down, the wreath shimmerred and morphed into a face that Iggy knew. It was the face of Iggy's father, slowly shaking his disembodied head back and forth.

     "Ignacious', the voice spoke, sounding like broken glass in a blender, ' Yer still a worthless punk, but even you deserve this warning. Do not enter this house tonight, lest ye be visited by...."

     Iggy tore the wreath from the door and flung it into the nearby dumpster for a metaphysical three pointer.

     'Great just what I need a Christmas acid flashback....'

     Thinking his errant drug use had come back to fuck with him, Iggy's mood turned a fouler shade of foul as he entered his apartment. His dog Chester ran up to greet him but, sensing his 'master's' mood, he slunk back to the corner where Lexington and 57th, Iggy's cats, had wisely retreated. Cats can sense hostile misanthropes through closed doors, it's a proven fact. Iggy slumped on the sofa in front of the tv and clicked through the dials, looking for something dark. A police drama, maybe, with one of those villians capable of the kind of unspeakable, but ever-escalating evil and cruelty that had become the rage in recent years. But all he could find was some component of the whole 'Rudolph the Snowman Has a Wonderful Life at the Bell's of St Mary on a Silent Night When Christ was Born Brought to You by Wal-Mart' school of holiday cinema that put his teeth even more on edge than usual.

     57th, a small grey male tabby and the more naive of Iggy's cats, leaped onto Iggy's lap and nuzzled his chin, purring loudly as if to ask 'What's wrong?'. Iggy, who professed to hate everyone and everything all the time did have a soft spot in his heart for animals, especially this cat, who was innocence with a tail.

      "Well, little boy, I'll tell ya what's wrong', he spoke, and not unkindly, ' Dad's down because of all this Christmas stuff. You don't understand it 'cause yer a cat, and that's part of why I love you. But us humans with our big brains and superstitions have to set aside one day where we pretend to be better than we are. Or at least we used to pretend. Anymore it's too much trouble to even do that. We throw ourselves this little party, declaring it to be the birthday of this guy who was born, like, 2000 years ago and was the son of God and died to save us. But you know what? It's all a load of hooey and most of us know it and don't even care.'

     57th pulled his ears back, looking so quizzical that Iggy had to laugh.

     "No really. Listen: Historians, or as we call them, the 'winners' 'cause the winners always write the history, right? Historians say that this guy wasn't born on December 25th, and even though we supposedly started counting time all over again starting at his birth, historians say that he was born in August 4 B.C. And this guy is the 'C' in 'B.C.'. Ridiculous, right? Anyway, December 25th was chosen as the 'official' birthday of this guy by the wife of the Emperor Constantine because it was the alleged birthday of her favorite god. Favorite pagan god, at that. As a matter of fact, or as close to fact as we guessing humans get, the whole Christmas concept was built upon the Solstice celebration of the pagans. I think it was called Saturnalia, but I'm not sure. But, boy, these Christmas people are sure, all right. Sure that their boy is the son of God and that their God can beat up everybody else's God and they're determined to make this country, our country, adhere to their beliefs. Yeah, I know that's a generalization, but I'm feeling general tonight.'

     At that point what looked like a smoke bomb went off in the apartment and when the smoke cleared there stood three angels, coughing and looking a little seasick.

     'Oh great. What the Dickens are y'all doing in my acid flashback?' Iggy asked.

     The smallest of the angels spoke first. 'We were sent to teach you the true meaning of Christmas."

     'Aren't you supposed to come one at a time?'

     The larger, bearded angel answered. "Ordinarily, yeah, but while we were in the green room playing cards and waiting to go on, we been watching and listening to you.', and apparently reading Iggy's mind he continued, 'and, yes, reading your blog. Again, ordinarily we'd go through the whole riff of taking you back in time and exploring why you're so unhappy, then fly you down the street to see all yr neighbors enjoying the true spirit of the season and, when that didn't work, my friend Slick here,' he pointed to the impossibly tall, black cloaked angel to his left, 'would fly you into the future and show you your grave and you'd swear to be good to avoid dying alone and unloved and we'd all go back to the base and gear up for another year.'

    'But you're not doing that because......?'

     The one called Slick answered for them. In a pleasant British accent. 'Because we don't think scaring you into becoming a 'good' person is valid. That by bringing about a transformation, any transformation no matter how well-intentioned, through supernatural means is nothing less than spiritual terrorism and me and the boys have had enough of it. OK, so maybe you're unhappy, miserable even, but you've come to that misery through your own experience. You've past the point of blaming anyone other than yourself and you've shown a rare strain of decency through the way you treat your dog and cats. You're not much fun to be around at Christmas, granted, but your stance is honest. Besides, we're kinda sick of being the bad guys in this ridiculous morality play."

     'Oooooooooh', said the small angel, who'd been leafing through Iggy's record collection, ' An original copy of 'White Light/White Heat'! Let's boogie.'

     So that Christmas Eve in a just imagination, Iggy and the angels danced with the cats and dog to the strains of 'Lady Godiva's Operation' as the snow fell in waves upon the fooled and the fallen alike.

Merry Christmas from all of us at punk rock blues.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 21:10 | link | comments

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