TRUMPET BLAST with John Murray Penfold
http://johnmurraypenfold.20m.com

SANTA: THE REALITY

My fellow TCs, I have decided to tell my story.

It all began a long time ago. My parents had taken me to Ballarat to visit my aunt and uncle for Christmas. They lived in a rather large two-storey house on the edge of town, surrounded by a sprawling and untended garden that in summer was a haven for snakes and all sorts of vermin, to the extent that they were often criticised for not maintaining it more effectively. The house had three untidy verandahs, but inside it was more or less spotless because of my aunt's aversion to dust on account of a lung disease.

Anyhow, we arrived on the 23rd, pretty exhausted after spending many hours on a hot train and then pushing our way through the large crowds. When we arrived we got less of a welcome than we expected -- they were out -- and we had to sit down for twenty minutes on the dusty steps with our suitcases until they came back from their errand (I don't remember what exactly it was). They were apologetic, but there wasn't any reason to be, as the train had been rather late, and I had actually enjoyed looking at the strange house and its weird inviting garden.

Once inside I was given a glass of lemonade and patted on the head, told how much I had grown and so on. But soon they were busy talking and I got bored and went to play in the hallway, peeping into the other rooms. Being very quiet not to make a noise, I walked up the huge, carpeted staircase and had just turned around on the landing when, at the top, I saw a great stag's head mounted on the wall.

At the time, I had a great fear of large animals, and my father's lengthy descriptions of the anatomy of demons during my regular bedtime stories had made that fear double in the case of animals with the attributes of Pan, namely horns and hoofs. The one I had most recently heard about, the fuath Nuckelavee, was a minor (but no less horrible) prince of darkness. He was a skinless loose-entrailed monster that never tired of doing evil to mankind. His true home was the Arctic sea, but when on land he rode a great horse black as night, and in the air rode a great sleigh, pulled through the freezing stratosphere by a team of deformed oxen.

The similarity between this creature and the spirit described to me as "Father Christmas" by pagan playmates had never occurred to me, but events were to change that.

Anyway, the sight of that creature so horrified me that I turned on my heel and ran down the steps. My father, hearing my thumping, leapt out the room and gave me a well-deserved slap for wandering off without having been given permission. My uncle was a little surprised but said nothing. Tears welled up in my eyes but in my pride I managed to suppress them, and I looked at my shoes, penitent.

That night, when carried to the guest bedroom by my uncle, I shivered with fear at the turn on the landing and buried my face in his shoulder when I knew we were passing the stag's head. It took me a while to get to sleep, knowing the hairy thing was just outside my door; and the next day when I could not delay going down to breakfast any longer I shut my eyes tight and felt my way to the top of the stairs, crawling my way to the landing practically head first so as to avoid the horrid sight of the monstrous antlered thing. After breakfast I ran out the back-door into the garden, my uncle warning me not to venture into the long grasses.

For the first two hours I heeded the warning, but increasing dissatisfaction with the small area that could be called well-tended, which contained little other than a pile of broken bricks and a rusted watering-can, prompted me to venture into the grass in order to inspect a huge tree, wrapped in spirals of crumbling bark, which seemed to be bleeding brown sap in a wound about ten feet off the ground. The sap had hardened into a shiny black bulb, which seemed to regard me like a malefic eye. After walking around the tree to avoid this gaze, I noticed that a grove slightly down the slope seemed to contain an attractively shady spot in which something sky-blue glittered like an abandoned toy.

Warily trotting towards it, I entered the grove and bent down to inspect it. It was nothing more than a dented metal canister, which had reflected the sky from the angle at which I had seen it, but beside it was a red ribbon attached to a dirt-encrusted postcard on which was depicted, in sentimental oils, a ruddy-faced white-bearded old gentleman in red, with a great black belt and white woolly cuffs, standing next to the roaring fireplace in an otherwise dark room, raising a finger to his lips as if to warn me to silence.

It was then that I heard it. A gentle hissing noise, which seemed to come from all directions at once. Then I looked down, and saw a tiny brown snake right in front of my bare leg, ready to strike.

From my numb fingers fell the canister, and with a clump, it toppled directly onto the snake. Realising the opportunity, I pushed the rest of the tail under the tin's rim and insinuated the canister's lid underneath so as to enclose the wicked serpent completely. I then ran inside, just in time for lunch.

After lunch I ran outside to inspect my prize. I did not dare open the tightly-fastened lid, but I put my ear to the metal and listened to the muffled sounds as I turned the tin this way and that. Naturally I would have wished to tell my parents of my victory -- enclosing the subtile serpent who tempted Eve -- but instead cherished it in my proud, sinning heart and took the canister up to my room and placed it under the table, which was covered by a long green cloth.

At dinner, Uncle Trevor forgot to say grace. I shall never forget the black looks of rage that my father and mother gave him; seeing their fury he stammered a pathetic improvised prayer (he had clearly not said grace for a long time) and we set to. My father ate nothing for a few minutes, evidently shocked to the core by the lapse; but he must have decided that seeing as it was Christmas Eve he may as well oblige them by eating what they had prepared for us. My mother however refused any pudding, and after dinner went off to read one of the theological works she had bought at Ballarat during the day, snubbing the ungodly company.

I had never received presents at Christmas: such a custom teaches us to be worldly, as my parents knew. Nevertheless, my indulgent relatives often sent little trifles in my name, which my father would of course burn without a word, spending a long time watching the brown paper and string twist and crackle on the fire. There was a possibility however that while in a different household, the Father Christmas demon might attempt to pay one of his evil visits, under the impression that I was one of the unsaved. Thus it was with some trepidation that the hours leading to bedtime passed for me and my parents.

Once the adults were asleep that night, I decided that it was time to act. If the serpent could be conquered so easily, the horned one could be vanquished in the same way.

With the greatest of precautions, I pushed a chair out of my room and positioned it under the stag's head. Groping my way, not willing to view the thing, I clambered up, gripped the monster by both antlers and gently lifted it off its hook. At this point I thought I heard a noise (a muffled gasp) and I stopped, straining my ears. But there was nothing more.

I took the thing into my room and hid it under the table. As I did so, I heard a strange scrabbling from the chimneypiece and I ran to my bed, pulling the covers over my face, trembling with fear.

Five minutes passed. Turning around, I saw something I shall never forget. The tablecloth was lifting itself up: and the shape it enveloped was the shape of Old Nick himself!

With a scream I leapt bravely from my bed and let fly with my fists at the hideous creature which had come to violate my sleep with its gaudily-wrapped "gifts" of sin. The "St Nick" Nuckelavee -- for it could be nothing else -- let out a great moan, and kicked the tin, which rolled out onto the landing and popped open. Enshrouded in the great tablecloth, the demon flailed, dropping parcels every which way and shouting curses such as I had never heard before in my life. What an outrage: a demon polluting my ears in a last desperate attempt to pierce my godfearing armour. But it was no avail. I pushed the hoofed thing out the door, slammed it and locked it, opened the window, and threw the presents out into the garden.

So it was that I defeated not one but two creatures of darkness in a single holy night. Such things are not given to many men, let alone an innocent child such as I was. Be that as it may, it was with pride that I related the events to my father on his knee on Christmas morning. Very gravely, nodding his head up and down, he said that indeed, there had been a great crash and shouting such as I had described. He had leapt to the bedroom door and found it locked. Such was the ingenuity of Satan's servant in preventing the patriarch from coming to my aid.

But I have been speaking overlong. Here I close, with the reassurance that yes, Virginia, there are demons. And one is named "Santa Claus", who has stolen the holy name of the great St Nicholas of blessed memory. May that creature burn in Hell for eternity.

J. M. Penfold