Course: Science Fiction & Religion
Lecture #5: Reading #3
When Jesus Comes Down The Chimney
By Ian Watson
Now, JAMIE, IF you don't go to bed when your Daddy tells you to, Jesus won't come down the chimney!
Oh, so you can't even imagine sleeping yet?
Saints! Tell you the whole story of Jesus-and of Santa Claus too? Why, that would take till nine.
Well, maybe... (No, I am not spoiling the boy!)
You just snuggle up in your chair by the fire there, Jamie, and listen to me. And I'll be carrying you upstairs before you've heard the half of it!
We'd better start with Santa Claus.
We all know how Santa was born in a humble stable amongst the chickens and goats. Most of his countryfolk were poor, and Santa's parents were no exception. No shoes on their feet, no fine cakes in the larder. No larders, often! A lot of those people lived in tents, and it got pretty cold in the winter. Three magicians had hiked a thousand miles to be present when Santa was born. They followed a bright comet in the sky, and brought a magic sack as a gift. You could take whatever you wished for out of this sack. Santa's mother didn't want to stir up jealousy amongst her neighbors, so she hid the sack away. Anyway, her country was being occupied by the Roman army. If the Romans heard of the magic sack she feared they'd take it away for their wild, greedy emperor. When Santa grew to manhood his mother gave him the magicians' gift and explained all about it. Santa decided then and there that he would like to shower presents on his countryfolk, though he swore that he would never pull anything out of the sack for himself.
So Santa tramped around the land with the sack over his shoulder, giving people whatever their hearts most desired, or what they needed most. He kept his vow about giving nothing to himself. Even so, one widow woman requested a fine red coat trimmed with angora wool and then insisted that Santa should wear it, not she. A leper whose feet were rotted and crippled asked for a pair of stout black boots, and forced these on Santa.
That wasn't all. Such a number of grateful people pressed bread and cheese on Santa, from out of their meagre stocks, not to mention fish and fruit and meat and milk and wine-- which he couldn't decently refuse--that within a few years he grew positively stout!
Well, the Roman soldiers finally arrested him. All of those free gifts that poured from Santa's sack were destabilizing a marginal economy. They were weakening the currency. They were causing job refusal in the colonial labour market.
The Romans tied the magic sack over Santa's head. They marched him up to the top of a hill and nailed him to a wooden cross, then jabbed their spears through the sack a couple of times to blind him.
When they took Santa down dead at last they bundled his corpse into the sack, tied it tight, and set an official seal on it. They debated tossing him into the nearby river, but eventually their captain allowed Santa's friends to carry him away to a tomb.
That night the tomb was broken into by robbers who hoped to steal the magic sack ... and they found the sack lying there empty. It was as if that burlap bag had digested Santa Claus! As if it had spirited him away to the dimension where all free gifts came from.
The robbers were filled with wonder, and didn't want to steal ever again. Instead, they made a pact to spread the word about Santa all over the world and to carry the sack (or snip- pets from it) wherever they went, as proof. The sack was first carried to Roma, then later to Torino, where most of it remains to this very day.
In later years the descendants of those original robbers promised that one day when everybody in the world had heard of Santa and loved him, the sack would begin to dis- tribute free gifts again. That's why, every Easter, we all receive presents wrapped in sack-cloth, in memory of Santa. Jesus? Oh, yes, I'm coming to him. Of course I am, Jamie! It's Jesus who's important tonight.
Jesus was the leader of those thieves who broke into Santa's tomb. (There's something symmetrical, don't you think, between gifts and robbery? Robbery is the product of a society where there aren't enough gifts to go round or where there are too many gifts for too few people. What's that? Sym-met-ric-al. It means... oh, it doesn't really matter, Jamie darling. Honest!)
Jesus was the ex-thief who carried the sack to Roma where the hysterical greedy emperor lived, guarded by his soldiers with their spears.
When Jesus arrived in Roma he went straight to the Forum. That's a sort of meeting place, like a Senate, but for the common people.
Jesus stood up on a marble block and waved the empty sack and called out with the help of a translator, from Aramaic into Latin, "Plebeians of Roma, I bring you gifts!" (A plebeian was someone unemployed, living on free bread and enjoying free entry into circuses.)
At first the plebeians who thronged the Forum stared at the sack as eagerly as if they were looking up a girl's skirt.
When they saw that the sack was empty, many of them hooted and jeered. Others lost their temper and chucked pebbles.
But Jesus cried out, "The gifts I bring you are dialectical!" (This was a term which Jesus borrowed from the Greek philosophers.) "Your desires are the thesis. This sack is the antithesis: The synthesis is that you should empty yourselves of false goals, vain dreams, the products of a diseased society. Just you empty all of that false consciousness of yours into this sack! It will hold everything, and reduce everything that is contradictory. In its place you'll discover that gifts ought to be given according to one's needs, not one's desires-but society at present is based on legalized theft, on the alienation of persons from their soil, from their work, even from their own bodies and sexuality."
With daily repetition, Jesus' message began to sink in. Soon a few of the plebeians believed him--and stepped into the sack and out again, as a symbol of their change of heart. Then many.
At last the emperor's curiosity was piqued; for the circus seats remained empty, and the elephants and the trained apes which rode them wept. Also there was growing unrest among his soldiers at the prospect of yet another colonial war.
The emperor in person led a party of trusted guards to the Forum, intending to spear this Jesus. On the way there the emperor. now, we must tell the truth: he was a hysteric but he also cunningly sensed his own political and economic infrastructure ebbing away... the emperor experienced a visionary fit. He saw a sack in the sky which swallowed the sun. (Actually, we believe this was a total eclipse.) When he reached the Forum he dismounted from his horse-and stepped into the sack. Soon the empire had totally changed ...into a republic.
Ah, now. you're nodding off.
Let's go quietly, mm? Up up up to bed.
Tonight, night of nights, Jesus will climb down the chimney and take away whatever you think is most precious to you. Will it be your rocking horse? Or your toy bear? Or just your tin whistle?
Tush. How else could other deserving little children receive fine gifts at Easter time?
Hush. He'll take something from us all. Not just you, you dobbin. Maybe I'll lose my spinning wheel tonight. Maybe it'll be my purple velvet dress.
Jesus'll redistribute all our wealth. That's why he's called "the good thief." He brings Santa's empty sack with him down all the chimneys in the whole wide world, and fills it full from every house.
Here we are now, darling. Tuck up tight, and shut those eyes. No peeping, or he mightn't come.