Covering Christmas: a Cracked Carol

The journal of Edward Herring

It was Christmas Eve. There was no doubt about that. The editor of his newspaper, full of the bonhomie of the season, had given Edward Herring a memo and assigned him to the graveyard shift that precedes the day of universal rejoicing and goodwill to all creatures.

‘Bah, humbug,’ thought Edward. ‘Tell that to the turkeys.’

And it was true that nothing of significance tended to happen on Christmas Eve. He would sit here in this stuffy office all night, with one ear listening for the whir of the ancient fax machine, one ear on the police radio and both eyes on the new-fangled computer screen, and Christmas Day would dawn without fuss. Wasted time.

However, a few hours into his vigil Edward Herring, reporter for the Byron Shire Echo and on certain dread occasions foreign correspondent of the Shelley Cove Times, began to feel uncomfortable.

It was as if something was tickling the edge of his mind. Tendrils of weird thought were waving about, disconnected ideas that did not seem to be his own danced around, making him feel quite dizzy.

Edward Herring was in fact quite used to the strange sensations that accompanied his unwilling jaunts through the multiverse, and he gritted his teeth in expectation of being wrenched into another reality.

It didn’t happen. Instead the office disappeared and he was surrounded by a grey fog that flickered as if lit by a film projector running too slowly. But each flicker revealed for a second or so what Edward took to be a world of its own, separated from ours by the tiniest reset of quantum values.

It was midwinter on each of these worlds, as far as he could judge. The scenes were projected on to the grey fog in three-dimensional detail with multichannel sensoria. He saw an abundance of Father Christmasses, felt the hot breath of Moosedaddy, heard the blood-curdling growls of Santa Paws, smelled the pungent odour of the Hogfather and witnessed the secret solstice customs of a hundred alien cultures.

In defence of his sanity Edward closed his eyes, although he could still feel the multiverse continuing to flick through its repertoire of worlds. But it was Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, here on Planet Earth, version 1.0, and he wasn’t about to let his senses tell him otherwise.

Finally the changes slowed down, like an exhausted roulette ball. One or two more hops and it would settle into a slot. With his luck it would probably be zero.

♦

When Edward opened his eyes it was the familiar shapes of the newspaper office that greeted them, and he was about to let out a sigh of relief when he noticed that he was not alone.

There was a forlorn figure sitting beside the fax machine. It was tiny, so tiny its pointy shoes did not reach the floor. It was dressed all in green except for a red pointy hat which sat above its pointy ears. It was sobbing quietly.

Edward walked over to the creature and offered it his handkerchief. He was not particularly knowledgeable about midwinter myths, but he thought he could recognise a Christmas elf.

The elf looked up at him with tearful eyes and blew its nose.

‘No keep it,’ said Edward. ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’ wailed the elf. ‘Some terrible spell has changed everything, and I’ve lost my job.’

‘Well, I know there was a reality kaleidoscope just now, but everything’s back to normal, isn’t it?’

‘If by normal you mean Father Christmas being replaced by a monster who demands gifts instead of giving them, who travels around the world in a poisonous jet instead of a sleigh, who wants us all to choke to death on his filthy pollution, then I suppose things are normal.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

The elf dropped its voice. ‘I mean Old King Coal has taken over. He’s banished Santa Claus, barbecued the reindeer and made us helpers redundant. In future there’ll be no Christmas. In fact in future there’ll be no future.’

♦

‘There he is,’ whispered the elf.

It had led Edward out of the office and into the town square. Usually on Christmas Eve there would be a tree, lit up with tinsel and electricity, in the middle of this civic space. Now the tree was stretched out on the ground, its trunk brutally splintered, all the decorations smashed.

Around the ruins of the Christmas tree capered a grotesque giant. Its body was made of lumps of coke stuck together, covered by a shabby Santa costume streaked with coaldust. Its feet were iron shovels that dug into the ground as it moved, and from the top of its gross, misshapen head rose a smokestack belching poisonous gas.

A thin but intent crowd watched as Old King Coal danced ponderously to the screeching of three fiddles and a set of bagpipes. Edward had to blink and look twice before he realised that the fiddlers were Gina, Clive and Gautam, billionaire industrialists, and the piper was the prime minister. Or at least it was a prime minister because the face behind the pipes was changing all the time, while remaining oddly the same.

Beside the musicians was a buskers’ bowl filled with gold coins, banknotes and contracts. Edward could make out titles on a couple of the documents: ‘Global Warming 101’ and ‘Polluting for Profit.’

‘I don’t think this is real,’ said Edward. The elf rolled its eyes.

‘I mean this is how things might be if we let them happen. Like the Ghost of Christmas Future in the story. But we can change this future if we want to.’

Real or not, the King ended his dance and sat down on a piece of tree trunk. The prime minister, still puffing the groaning bagpipes, signalled to an aide. Smartly dressed politicians appeared with sacks of gold coins and poured them into the bowl, which seemed to be bottomless. The sacks bore labels such as ‘Health’, ‘Education’ and ‘Housing,’ which Edward thought was labouring the point somewhat.

One of the three fiddlers made a speech about coal being good for all living things. It did not go well with the crowd, which pressed forward making angry noises.

The elf said, ‘This is not looking good,’ and clung to Edward for moral support.

Edward blinked. For a moment he thought he saw one of the piping prime ministers sitting on the King’s lap, nibbling a lump of coal.

Then all three metres of compressed coke, iron and bone that constituted Old King Coal leapt up and roared. The crowd stood its ground, to the discomfort of those in the front row, and just as the battle for humanity’s survival began, the multiverse roulette ball clicked into zero and all went dark.

♦

Edward found himself back in the office, with his head on his desk. He sat up yawning. It was Christmas Eve. There was still no doubt about that, although he felt some doubt as to his recent geography, and a nursery rhyme was running around in his head. There was, as expected, no local news to report from this shift, although the machineries of greed and war continued at a distance.

Among the news clippings, stray cables and general desk litter that had just served as a pillow he noticed the hitherto unread memo: 

‘To Edward Herring: During the night shift you are to provide an article to go with this year’s Christmas cover. From: The Editor.’