Let Men Their Songs Employ: a Holiday Timeline

[spanishspy]

Preface:

I graduated in May and have been job hunting for the past several months. It's a draining process, especially having to live with my abusive parents. It's been a struggle trying to find ways to cope with the ennui and the feeling of running in place. There's been dancing and alternate history and other such things.

To be very frank with you I was doubtful that this timeline wasn't going to happen. It wasn't til the day of making this post that I came up with the idea for the timeline; usually I have the idea by August or September. However the idea struck me, and it is with pleasure I can say that the seventh incarnation of this holiday tradition of mine will come.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Without Further Ado:

LET MEN THEIR SONGS EMPLOY
A Holiday Timeline
by SpanishSpy

Coming to an online discussion forum near you 12/1/19

[lordroel]

Nov 26, 2019 4:40:31 GMT spanishspy said:

Preface:

I graduated in May and have been job hunting for the past several months. It's a draining process, especially having to live with my abusive parents. It's been a struggle trying to find ways to cope with the ennui and the feeling of running in place. There's been dancing and alternate history and other such things.

To be very frank with you I was doubtful that this timeline wasn't going to happen. It wasn't til the day of making this post that I came up with the idea for the timeline; usually I have the idea by August or September. However the idea struck me, and it is with pleasure I can say that the seventh incarnation of this holiday tradition of mine will come.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Without Further Ado:

LET MEN THEIR SONGS EMPLOY
A Holiday Timeline
by SpanishSpy

Coming to an online discussion forum near you 12/1/19

Nice, a new spanishspy, TL.

[stevep]

spanishspy ,

  Sorry to hear that things have been so rough for you and hope things get better soon.  Glad to hear you can continue this ATL Christmas tradition.  Didn't realise it has been going on for 7 years.  A great achievement. 

  Steve

[spanishspy]

Saint Nicholas watched over the carnage below, as he had for generations. This was the price he paid to comfort the sick and dying, and bring joy to those who had none: he had to view humanity from a distance, never interfering in any great detail, for he was afraid that if he were to involve himself openly in human affairs, he would either die or end up propping up all of civilization.

That was the price of gift-giving: watching these young men pay the price of a mile, here in this corner of France. It was to them he’d bring this subset of gifts. It was all he could do, without destroying himself and others. It was coming close to night, and as the sunset washed over the hellscape he touched the sleigh down.


. . .


No Man’s Land had, for a very brief moment, become a land of men again. The men in one trench had called out to the men in the other trench, and that one night it seemed as if that war really would be over by Christmas, albeit not the ending that Lord Kitchener or Herr von Falkenhayn would want. Britons, Frenchmen, and Germans came together to forget about the whims of rich men and commiserate over their shared Christian heritage.

As the uplifting yet tortured strains of Auld Lang Syne wafted through the air, it occurred to Tommy Waldrop that this is very much not what he had expected to be doing when he enlisted. Singing carols with the Germans? He would have laughed it off. He was a street brawler from Glasgow, who was heavily pressured to join up both by his own family and by the big-mustached man pointing at him on the poster. He wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the notion of dying in a ditch in France, but here he was.

The carols stopped. The British and the Germans came together, communicating through gestures and mimes and the occasional soldier who spoke the enemy’s language; there were aesthetes in the German lines and scientists in the British lines. Tommy embraced a German soldier, Pickelhaube and all, as the two lines dissolved and came together.

“Tommy,” he said, gesturing to himself with his right hand. “Otto,” said the German, doing the same to himself. They nodded at each other and looked deeply into each other’s eyes for the slightest of moments. Here they were, two young men each thrown into hellfire because an Austrian prince was shot in Sarajevo.

The group of soldiers devolved into an impromptu football match, with a helmet serving as the ball. British on the one hand, Germans on the other.

It very much was something Tommy Waldrop had not expected when he had signed up.


. . .


The sleigh drifted onto the snow. There they were, thought Saint Nicholas. He took his sack off his sleigh and ordered two elves, chosen specifically for this particular stretch of the run. Witney and Junius followed him, carrying more sacks.

The men were enjoying themselves tremendously, with a calque of English and German being spoken, with the meaning being made clear well enough. Nicholas approached them, and waved.

“Good tidings to all of you!” he called out. “A Merry Christmas to one and all!”

The men stopped their football game and just looked at the burly man in a big red coat - warmer than anything the men were wearing - warm boots, and a cloth cap.

“Just who the fuck do you think you are?” asked a Glaswegian-accented voice.

[spanishspy]

Saint Nicholas wasn't quite used to the hostility he was getting at this moment. Usually he was able to sneak in and out of a domicile, or in a common area that wasn't in use at the moment. He didn't usually have to interact with the people he was giving gifts to.

"I'm Saint Nicholas. I give presents to people every Christmas. Haven't you heard?"

There was an awkward silence which lingered for far, far too long.

One Briton stepped forward and asked in the same Glaswegian accent Nicholas had heard earlier. "So where the fuck have you been the past twenty years of my life? If you can give the entire fucking world presents one day a year, why can't you do it the rest of the fucking year?"

"What's your name, son?"

"First of all, I'm not your fucking son, old man. Second of all, I have lived all my life the son of a factory worker in Glasgow, with the exception of here, when the man on the poster very insistently told me to go die in a ditch in France because some rich arsehole in Austria got shot. Could you, Saint Nicholas, have done something there? I'm willing to bet you could have, assuming you're not just some other rich arsehole with too much money."

There was general assent among the Britons. The Germans nodded and seemed to have an idea what was going on. Faintly, Nicholas heard what he thought was translating.

"It's tradition," he meekly replied. "That's what I do."

"Well, you've certainly seen a lot of misery like we have. Why didn't you do something?"

Tommy Waldrop stared Saint Nicholas right in the eyes.

"Why do we do this on Christmas only?" asked Witney to Junius.

[stevep]

Well that's an interesting turn but then given the horrors of WWI its probably quite possible. Although I would be surprised, given how bad much of human history has been that he hasn't encountered such a reaction before.

[spanishspy]

Witney Adventwreath had always had doubts about the entire enterprise he worked for. Sure, Nicholas had given the elves a home after they fled from Russia, but after that, they were cheap labor. It wasn't cruel, but it was work for most of the year, and then celebrating Christmas, and then building more toys.

Or, in this case, food for soldiers in a war he had no part in.

And now his entire worldview was being questioned. His entire being, really.

Nicholas turned to him. "You join him?"

"Whoever this guy is, he's pretty smart."

"Name's Tommy Waldrop. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, even if your ears are pointy." The soldier extended his hand and the elf shook it.

Nicholas still had no answer.

"You know what? I never really had much faith in your whole enterprise, Claus. I'm staying with these guys for a while."

Waldrop shrugged. "First reasonable thing I've heard since the fat guy showed up." He heard assent from the other soldiers.

Witney dropped his sacks. "It's yours for the taking," he remarked as he gestured toward the soldiers.

It was the first really warm food they had eaten in a long time. There even was a small stove.

Nicholas just shook his head and went back to the sleigh.

[spanishspy]

Nicholas returned to the North Pole in disgrace. Junius was there to keep him company, but the absence of Witney was pronounced.

"It's tradition! I tell you, it's tradition! We don't want to be involved in foreign entanglements! Look at them!" Nicholas gestured to the men on the ground. He heard, in the distance, some maxim guns being fired and artillery guns pounding away. "Do we want this savagery brought upon our shores?"

"But we represent the season of giving!"

"They ask why it's only a season."

The cold continued to bite their faces.

And somewhere, in the distance, a soldier was teaching an elf how to sing:

"Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!"

[lordroel]

Nice spanishspy, keep it up.

[spanishspy]

"Why do you fight here?" asked Witney.

"Because I need the money, and because the King told me to do so," replied Tommy.

"And why did he tell you that?"

"Because the Kaiser threatened Belgium."

Witney turned to the Germans standing in the group. "Did the Kaiser threaten Belgium?"

A bilingual Englishman translated for him. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because they were in the way of the French."

"And what did the French do to you?"

"Ally with the Russians."

"And what did the Russians do to you?"

"Invade us after we supported Austria against the Serbians."

"And why did the Kaiser do that?"

"Because we are allies with the Austrians."

"And you're supposed to die fighting Britons, and the Britons are supposed to die fighting you, because of all this?"

"Yes," was the unanimous reply.

"Why?"

[spanishspy]

As Nicholas flew northbound, with Junius in tow, he could not help but see the carnage below him. The Maxim guns began firing, as did the artillery.

Even from up above the screams he heard were agonizing.

Land turned to sea, and there wasn't much on the sea other than simple water, rolling in the dark as the North Pole beckoned. He landed on the snowdrift he used as a landing pad and touched down gently.

He was shaken, no matter what he wanted to admit. Then and there he decided to discard even that notion.

He had to change, and change soon, the entire enterprise of the North Pole.

He got back to his office and called up the assembly, through his right-hand elf Cornelius Candycane. Within the day, the assembly was there.

He stepped up to his podium and said one sentence:

"We must do this more than just once a year."

. . .

"You must stop doing this every few years! This is absurd! Why do you murder in the name of rich men?" asked Witney.

There was no good answer among the men, British and German both. Tommy Waldrop nodded his assent. "I never asked to go to war. I did it because I felt I had to. Because I felt like the big-mustached man on the poster told me to."

"Then what should we do?" asked Witney again.

"Stop this madness!" cried the Britons. The Germans said something similar.

[spanishspy]

"There is absolutely no point in this nonsense, Nicholas!" shouted out Claudius Bellringer. A noted member of the North Pole council, he was a staunch isolationist who did not want to get involved at all with the outside world beyond the originally stated mandate.

He and Nicholas often had these rows in the council. Like so many times, it'd end up with the two of them sparring. Bellringer knew he was trusted as a loyal opposition, so he could get away with a lot.

Few elves dared use the saint's birth name.

"I have seen suffering beyond belief in France."

"And you flew away as you did that in so many other wars. Why now? And why did you abandon Witney?"

"He left of his volition."

"Then why didn't you corral him?"

Another silence. Nicholas did not feel like continuing what was clearly a gish gallop.

He paused.

"All in favor of more relief for the suffering in the war, say aye."

A chorus of 'aye!'s ensued. Bellringer simply glared.

[spanishspy]

The factories of the North Pole once more began belching smoke into the air; Nicholas had not skimped on modernizing his methods of manufacture. But these were not toy factories, now; they were making jackets and belts and tools and all sorts of things that the suffering masses of the world might need.

The Saint walked through the assembly lines and fields; the latter were usually for growing the foodstuffs in candy but were now being used for the foodstuffs themselves. The elves toiled away, obeying the diktat of the Saint and his council.

Most of them, anyway. Cornelius Candycane had received a telegram from an overseer who was going on and on about some sort of 'red rebellion.' Nicholas himself had driven the reindeer out to the mint fields to see what had to be done.

There was a crowd of elves holding signs and shouting slogans. On one sign read "No Contract, No Labor!"

"And what contract would this be?" he asked. The agreement between Nicholas and the elves came from the historical circumstance of their arrival on the North Pole and upheld by tradition. There was no written agreement.

"We work for the children, not for the adults who kill them!"

Nicholas was stunned. He was silent for just a moment. "Have you no empathy? I know for a fact that none of you have seen the front."

"And we don't need to. You and your sycophants chose to work us in a way you never have before. We ask you, why was this not the case for the other murderous wars of the past?"

For that Nicholas had no answer.

[spanishspy]

Tommy Waldrop felt like he could stand up to his overlords for the first time in his entire life.

Against the policemen who arrested lower class folks like himself for barely any reason.

Against the industrialists who worked his family for hours on end.

Against the generals who sent him to die in a ditch in a foreign country.

And against the politicians that dictated all of the above.

There was singing, uniting the British and the Germans in the single warm voice of The Internationale and other songs that were common to both cultures. There was unity here, proletarian unity. They were joined by that one elf, who really deserved credit for this whole thing.

Tommy liked that elf. It was strange that he somehow spoke both English and German, and knew the realities of the war pretty well, but he'd take it.

There was dancing and football playing and a sense of jubilation, followed by the digging of a small circular trench, to defend them from either the lion or the eagle.

They were ready. They had concocted their speeches and loaded their weapons. They knew many, if not all, of them would die here, but they were willing to make the statement.

On a continent convulsed by madness, was not rejecting it all the sane thing to do?

[spanishspy]

There was revelry and joy and all those other things that made worth living. Witney and Tommy danced and sang, the voices of the entire group of deserters forming a wonderful chorus.

But noise, no matter how wonderful it is to those who take joy in it, can also be heard by those who are hostile.

Before too long, they were surrounded by men of the British Expeditionary Force. "Cease this immediately and put your hands up!"

The guns were pointed from all directions at the mixed group of soldiers. "Hände hoch!" cried out some of the Britons, who were tasked with corralling the Germans, who would be prisoners of war.

They simply surrendered. They were outgunned and outnumbered, and resisting something so much more powerful would simply create more chaos, the exact opposite of what they wanted to do. So, the vote was made to surrender.

The Britons were to be tried for treason and the Germans were made prisoners of war. Witney went in the latter, and the commanding officers weren't sure what to do with them.

In that jail cell, Tommy could only think of how typical this was, how normal it was, for the state to come down on him. After all, they put him here in France in the first place.