SANTA GOES TO CHURCH

Even the frozen North must sometimes have even colder spells....

SANTA GOES TO CHURCH

Santa Claus was used to cold weather, but one winter it was colder than ever and even if he stuffed mother Christmas's thickest brassiere with eider feathers and wore it like earmuffs he thought the icy blasts of wind would dislodge his ears and carry them off like two solid chunks of supercooled ice. It was so bad outside he got close to cancelling the Christmas delivery, and that was something he'd never done, not in all the years he'd been in the job.

He stuck his nose outside and a ball of snot froze solid in an instant right where it was, at the end of his right nostril. He decided to experiment with his favourite game of turning the snow yellow, but was left in almost unbearable pain as his wee froze inside his willy before he could expel it. And had he not fallen back inside the Ice Castle and slammed the door he might have been frozen to death there and then.

It was a winter to beat all winters.

“Bloody Ice Age,” he muttered to himself, and he went in search of Mother Christmas for comfort, but she was busy baking and had no time for him and his frost-bitten private parts.

At times like this, he thought, at times like this I need to go to church and get my sins scratched from St Peter's big book. That's what I need to do.

So he went in search of Church. He knew there must be one somewhere because there was everything a man might need inside the Ice Castle, and a great deal else that he mightn't need, and amongst the latter group he was certain there must be a church. The trouble was the building which, a bit like the fictitious Hogwarts where Harry Potter supposedly went to be educated, the rooms moved. In the case of Hogwarts it was to do with magic but here, in the Ice Castle, it had to do with the mischievous antics of ice that melts and reforms into different shapes. The building was in a constant state of flux. It could be heard melting and occasionally dripping wetly and then it could be heard freezing and making quite threatening snapping sounds. All that was perfectly normal, but it did mean he was never quite sure what room might end up where.

Anyway, he enjoyed looking around at the mysteries of his home. He loved the surprises when he was convinced he was entering a playroom filled with playmates with their Lego and Meccano only to discover it was a bedroom with a couple getting unbelievably passionate with each other under the quilt, and that kind of thing happened interestingly frequently. There were always a lot of couples at the Ice Castle, visitors he had little knowledge of but who provided him with odd moments of perverse entertainment.

This time it didn't take him long to find the Church. It was a large ice hall with stained glass windows and white-robed priest manacled to a lectern.

“Hello, Percy,” he called out when he noticed him. “Still very attached to your job?”

“Let us pray...” began to the manacled priest.

“Do we have to?” groaned Santa Claus.

“It's what they pay me for,” murmured Priest Percy. “If it wasn't for praying I wouldn't have a job. As it is, another fifteen years of this and I'll have a pension to beat all pensions and I'll spend my twilight years holidaying in Italy and Austria and sailing on a barge down the Mighty Rhine when the mood takes me.”

“I don't have twilight years,” moaned Santa. “I've been doing this same job for well nigh two thousand years and, truth to tell, I'm fed up with it. There was a time when a dolly made of old twigs was enough to keep a tribe of little girls happy for months but now they expect all manner of electronic things, and I don't understand electricity. And what’s wrong with an apple and an orange as Christmas gifts, eh? It was good enough for me when I was a sprog. A nice orange pippin was all I got, and I loved it! But now I have to deliver stuff that plugs in!”

“You're old fashioned,” intoned Percy. “There is such a thing as progress, you know.”

“It doesn't seem to have touched your job,” smirked Santa. “If there was ever anything that would have benefited by a bit of progress it's your field of employment. I mean, you're still hawking that virgin birth nonsense!”

“What's wrong with that?” demanded Percy.

“Well, if the bird was virgo intacta how did the kid get out? Answer me that one if you can!”

“Oh ye of little faith...”

“I know, I know, I know, Percy. The only reason you're kept manacled to that lectern is because you're three sheets to the wind and might start dribbling if you got too much freedom! But less of that! I want absolution from my sins.”

“What sins?”

“Well, indecent exposure and getting a frost-bitten willy for starters.”

“That's not a sin!”

“Well, it feels like one. It stings like nobody's business, and I want absolution.”

“I'd have thought a nice ointment would be better.”

“No: absolution!”

“Was anyone watching?”

“Of course not! What do you think I am? A pervert?”

“Nothing I can do then, old man. Pissing in the open air isn't a sin. If it was the archangel himself would be one hell of a sinner, and I don't think the great Jehovah has installed porcelain yet...”

“Oh.”

“Any other sins?”

“Staring at Mother Christmas's bosom when she doesn't know I'm there?”

“That's only natural. I'd be doing it myself if I wasn't manacled to this lectern.”

“Well, what can you forgive me for?”

“Nothing, it seems: nothing at all. Do you believe in God?”

Santa paused for a moment. “I suppose so, sort of, I suppose,” he admitted at length.

“Then I'll forgive you for that! Now off you trot, Santa, be nice to all the little children of the world and store yourself a lot of kudos in Heaven!”

“Heaven?”

“Or some such place.” The Priest laughed hollowly. “Hallelujah!” he intoned, darkly.