Jingle Jangle
A Christmas Card From the Burning Bear
And then it was Yule, and the towers of London were swept by snow, dark clouds cutting the Shard in two, the air white, the streets white, the rooftops layered white like icing on a cake. The snow blurred the lights from the great cliff face of 122 Leadenhall Street, swirled about the ellipsoid flanks of the Swiss Re Tower like skirts about a dancer’s thighs, settled on Temple Square to deaden the hush of traffic crawling past as City Men and other tribesmen struggled home for the holiday.
London retreated from the modern world, settled into its old dark myths, called ghosts from the shadows to perform their traditions. Mummers were hired to act out their roles. The Old Year covered London in its funereal shroud, smothering modern London for its Last Eve. Into the streets, revellers called farewell to the year and drank to its death, gathering about impromptu braziers to roast meat and drink mead, the richer the borough the more elaborate the rituals, the poorer the borough the less of a show and more of a rite, their Yuletide less brazier, more bloody.
There was tinsel, and fir trees gaudy with glass, and halls and chambers were suitably decked. There were lights in the streets, and in the centre of town the facades of Empire were made festive with the latest inventions. Biomorphic blimps, translucent with light, floated like jellyfish in tropical colours, drifting above Regent Street and swimming the length of Oxford Street, turning the snow coral-coloured and delighting the gathering crowds. Holograms, Oculi-enhanced, danced overhead.
Music rang about the town from the doorways of pubs and the open windows of cars, familiar songs light in mood but heavy with memory, hymns to remembered days, echoes of distant childhood.
“Come Sing Ye All”
1
“Come Sing ye all for the Oak tree
Come Sing ye all for the Ash
Come Sing ye all for the old ways
And the grace of the green wood trees
2
Come Sing ye all for the Birch bright
Come Sing ye all for the Elm
Come Sing ye all for the forest
And the Earth’s eternal right
3
Come Sing ye all for the Holly
Come Sing ye all for the Yew
Come Sing ye all for the wisdom
That the ancient grove renews
Chorus:
By Oak, and Ash, and Holly,
By Birch and Yew so tall,
Call ye now to the old ways
For the green woods bless us all!”
A Revel
Charles Edward Arbuthnot Dombey Le Grey 2055
The parks of London were filling with crowds waiting for the firing of the trunks of oak and ash brought up from the forests for the Yule Burning. Hyde Park had its Year’s End Fair, the thump and ring of the fairground rides rolling across the park, their lights reflected in the Serpentine. James’s Park, by tradition the home of a safer fair, was filled with Londoners and tourists, the railings of the park lined with stalls selling pies and tarts, jugs of ale, leaves of hemp and tobacco. There was lighter fare for children and the frail: candy apples spiced with nothing more than cinnamon and honey, their mothers keeping their children close, keen to leave before the evening turned towards the rougher celebration of the season.
In Victoria Park, in the rude East End, the crowd was well settled into their revels, and the bonfire at the heart of it roared as it split the oak to cheers from its throng, sparks cast up into amber clouds. South of Isis, the river a tar-black snake coiled at the heart of the city, the tribes had gathered according to their tradition. Brixton shook to a seismic dub, Blackheath churned about a blasting fire, Greenwich railed against the towers on the far northern shore and fired rockets into the night. Far above, intercontinental flights fled for Asia and the Americas, filled with refugees fleeing this holiest of nights.
In the Street-With-No-Name a silence had settled, a holy stillness far from the revels. The granite cobbles were carpeted with snow, the arches of the viaduct silent and cold. A single streetlamp cast a cone of candle-yellow light from its lantern onto a circle of virgin snow to make the surface sugar-bright. Far away, beyond the silence, lights flared in the sky. Drifts of sound invaded the frozen street, faint and promising echoes from the feasts, but here, now, ice and stillness gathered.
After a time, at the base of an industrial door, rusted and riven, a line of light appeared. It flickered as if someone moved within, then vanished again. A pause, and then the door broke the silence of the street, tore it apart with the shriek of metal on metal. A dark mouth yawned, blackness for a gullet, and out of this gullet a figure stooped. The figure glanced about the street, paying close attention to old footmarks now filling with snow, tyre tracks blurring in the snowfall, watching the shadows as time passed as if unsure where they reached or when they ended. Eventually, some mortal dread pacified, the figure let down the industrial door, which shrieked its protest at such rough handling. The homunculus, silhouetted by the street lamp, set out, hands in pockets, head lowered, footsteps slow and careful.
The Burning Bear lit the street like a lantern, each pane of glass alive with shapes, a shadow-theatre of celebrating patrons. Coloured lights were strung across the facade, blinking in stuttering patterns, casting rainbow caustics on snow much churned by heavy traffic. The pub roared with noise, a clamour of reedy music and raised voices chanting out the lyrics to old favourites, latecomers hurrying to join the clamour, the men in their best and the women tottering on heels, flashing thighs and piled hair, some local tribal fashion broadcasting availability with sequins and stilettos. The group of locals reached the door and the sound doubled, the music a carnival–hymn hybrid, jolly with melancholy, a sad song sung with a swing. The dark figure listened. He knew the tune but didn’t understand the lyrics, remembered the words to a different song. Baffled, he pushed the door open and worked his way into the din.
“’Welcome stranger, glad yer come. ’Appy Yule, mate. Get yer a drink?”
Ed the Ted is dressed in red, scarlet drapes and dark red drainpipe trousers and shirt, a crimson string tie twisted to one side. The old Ted’s face is as scarlet as his jacket, and his crest is swept back, glistening with Brylcreem. Ed has a half-downed pint in one hand and his arm about a porcine blonde with breasts quivering in the grip of a high-lift bra. The rest of her girth is clasped in a violently pink sequinned dress that strains to contain a promenade’s worth of life belts stacked beneath arms the colour and softness of putty.
“Vis is Beryl.”
Beryl spread bloody lips to reveal glittering teeth and screwed up her eyes.
“I’ll have anover G&T, ducks, while yer at the bar.”
“What are they singing?” the dark figure demanded.
“Ooer.” Beryl’s eyes emerged from the full folds of her face, a startled white, mouth agape. She shuffled from under Ed’s arm.
“Wot mate?”
“What is the song?”
“Ee’s not right, Ed, you come away.”
Ed the Ted looked from a panicked and prescient Beryl to the heated face of the stranger, his alarmed eyes flickering across the celebrating crowd, vulgar in their passion. Even Normal was bellowing with the rest, face flushed, a crown of mistletoe on his head, arm waving a bottle of London Gin like a baton conducting his bar.
“Vat’s the ole hymn ‘Come the Lady,’ you know, an’ we had ‘Lay the Yule’ an’ ‘Solstice Cometh’ and all yer trad songs. It’s Years End mate, Years End, tradition, innit? Normal’s going to be firing the Oak back in the yard in half an hour or so… what’s up, mate, you look awful queer.”
“Ee’s not right in the ’ead, ’ee’s not. ’Ee looks mad wiv fright.”
Beryl backed away from Ed’s embrace, squeezed between two men and was lost in the crowd.
“Bloody marvellous that is. I was on a promise, wan’t I. Bloody hell, mate, you don’t ’alf know ’ow ter cast a shade.”
“But it’s Christ’s Mass.”
Ed parsed the words with all the care that an evening’s heavy drinking would allow.
“Wot?”
“Christ’s Mass. The Birth of our Lord.”
Ed did a double take, confused by spirits. Leant forward to shout a whisper.
“Blimey!” The old Ted looked shocked. “Is you’s one of them Nazarene? Better not noise that around, mate, not tonight. The East End is big on tradition, none of yer oriental cults ’ere, leastways not fer long.”
The dark stranger looked about the pagan bar.
“This is Hell.”
Ed reeled back in horror. “You keep yer voice down, people don’t take kindly to hexes, not tonight of all nights.”
“Fought you might wanna cuppa tea, on account of yer ’angover.”
The skeletal shape moved like a stick insect in the pale dawn light, placing a mug gently on the floor beside the deceased sofa in Ed the Ted’s office, rendered grainy in the light of the next day.
“An’ I need to ’ave a word to the wise, Good Shadow, on account of last night.”
The hesitant, stooping figure edged an emaciated buttock onto the shopworn vinyl arm of the settee and coughed reflectively.
“Ver’s a reason why Jack the ’at McVitie got topped. Most of the folk in these parts knew it was going to ’appen, and more than one or two fought it was for the best, on account of Jack ’avin’ totally lost it in the reality department—bit like you last night, mate. Yer see, it’s a conservative manor, yer East End.”
Ed nods encouragingly to emphasise his point.
“So they don’t take too kindly to being called Pagans, specially not on Yuletide, mate. I mean, yes, you ’ave a lot of Jews and Hindus abart ve East End on account of the Empire, but there’s no need to call people names, not when they are looking forward to opening their presents and playing wiv the kids and getting stuck inter yer Beef Log and a good night’s telly. I mean, it’s Years End, mate, good will an’ all vat. Which brings me back to Jack the ’at. He got topped because he got on everyone’s nerves, like you did last night wiv all the cursing and fighting. All I am sayin’ is yer need to stay schtum, an’ if they like yer, yer golden. An’ if they don’t, well, Jack found out the ’ard way. Jus’ sayin’, Good Shadow. Word to the wise…. Can’t keep calling yer Good Shadow can I. What do I call yer?”
“Sam.”
“Spouse you wouldn’t consider something normal, like Baal.”
“No.”
“Fought not.”
What would have happened if the Nazarene had stayed a small secretive sect? What if Rome had not embraced Christianity but driven it underground. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that reclusive Christian sects did exist. It is possible they may have survived any pogrom. And it is possible that, had Rome never reached the Isle of Mists off the northern coast of Gaul, that Druidic culture would have survived.
Happy Yule to you all…
The New Olde - Fashioned Way. 'Ere's To It ! Before the SJW Angels Come.....