Page 25 - Ferry Tales

Nestor

“It’s to punish you for being bad,” I say, pulling no punches—
although I’ve found it useless to use the word “evil” with children;
they associate it with characters in cautionary tales, not themselves.
“You know I’ve been bad?” She seemed shocked that her secret
sins were known to an outsider.
“Everything you’ve ever done has been recorded and will be used
against you.”
She is speechless for about five seconds.
“Then somebody fooled me! I thought that—”
I cut her off. At that age it’s all fresh enough in their minds for
them to make the necessary connections, and see where they went
wrong.
“It’s very simple. Do you believe in Santa Claus?”
“Not any more. That’s for little kids.”
Her smugness would not last long. “I am going to tell you where
you went wrong, Nestor. Get this: Santa Claus is the Devil.”
“What!”
“Yes, one and the same individual. It should be obvious, but most
people can’t see it. But listen: they both wear red and are associated
with fiery places. Both have beards and the same name: Old Nick and
Saint Nick. And they have never been seen in the same room
together.”
That didn’t get a laugh, either. It’s a good thing I’m not supposed
to be funny. She was silent, so I continued.
“Both of them, like most traditional deities, carry symbols of their
power: Santa has his bag of goodies to reward those who have been
good, and Satan has a pitchfork for punishing bad people. Note that
those two names are anagrams, like god and dog. Both of them have
to do with darkness: Saint Nick at the North Pole, frozen solid with
six months of night, venturing forth at midnight on a holiday near
the darkest day of the year, the death of the sun according to ancient
belief, the winter solstice—which occurs in the north as the sun
enters Capricorn, the astrological sign associated with Saturn and
goats, both emblems of the Devil; Old Nick lives in the gloomy
darkness of another extreme, the underworld, as perpetually locked in
fire as Saint Nick is in ice. Both have workshops in their inhospitable
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