Merry-Go-Round (Sequel to 'Carousel')

Chapter 7 - A Fog Tail

Despite his elaboration on the party, I wasn't much the wiser afterwards. The cabin belonged to a woman whom Michael called a friend and who had in one way or another contributed to his career – he elaborated on that, too, but I knew too little about the music business so I could make neither head nor tail of it. And although I had no doubt that he was indeed friends with her, there was still an air of business obligation about it. Maybe that made it easier for him to accept the idea of a Christmas party. Just like the song he had sung as a child, this endeavour had a moral safety clause: It could be argued to be business.

We passed the train stop at the height of the amusement park. Trees grew along the narrow tracks, and through them, past the cinema outbuilding, colourful flecks of striped tarpaulin could be seen. And where the trees stood back, they gave a stunning view of the long, green slopes of the hills that formed the Neverland Valley. Not all trees had kept their leaves and so the landscape was flecked with grey from stony ground and bare trunks and branches.

The leaves of evergreen trees around us rustled in the breeze that came and went, somewhere far off a bird was chirping, but other than that and the crunching of our feet on the roadbed, the world was quiet. Wonderfully, peacefully quiet. Michael had fallen silent, too, and I didn't mind. I walked with my head against his shoulder, holding on to his arm and feeling his hand in mine, watching him smile, occasionally at me but mostly at the world around us.

When we came closer to the end of the Neverland Valley, we left the tracks and cut through the trees and across a meadow. While the land had been largely evened out around the main house and the amusement park, here it still had its natural shape of smooth, wavy hills. The meadow nestled in a small depression in which the spirit of the original design of the ranch for horses and cattle seemed to have been preserved – a patch that didn't feel like undisturbed nature but like free countryside. Then we came out from under the trees to find the zoo in front us, separated from us only by a stretch of grass, a road coming from the fairground and another narrow train track that ran alongside the road.

While we had walked through the meadow, Michael's quiet had taken on a different quality. Now he looked at the wooden buildings and the white fences of the petting zoo with an almost wary expression. I gently squeezed his hand that was warm and firm in mine, and he looked up, then sighed and weighted the pack of bread in his other hand.
"You know," he said carefully and without that I had to ask, "I don't think Jesus was born today."
"Oh!" I rested my chin on his shoulder. The outside of his down jacket was cool to the touch. "No, Jesus wasn't born today."
"You don't think so?"
"Well, the story goes as follows, doesn't it: 'And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night'?"
Michael nodded.
"Well, winter nights are cold in the area of Bethlehem – too cold for sheep. Therefore they are in their stables at night, today as much as 2,000 years ago. So, if we believe that the story of Bethlehem and the shepherds is true, than it can't have been December."
Michael sighed. We crossed over to the zoo and sat down on a wooden bench of the train stop there, an open construction of white-painted wood with a roof overhead. Michael rested the pack of bread on his knees. "If you know it's not true, why do you celebrate it?"

I looked down the tracks along the outside fence of the petting zoo behind us and towards the rides, colourful dots in the grey-green that surrounded us. At the end of the fence I saw the sign that I knew read Neverland Zoo. But not only did it face away from us, it was also covered in red lining, possibly against the weather. I'd known this conversation would come.

"Nobody really claims the historical Jesus was born today, Michael. As far as I know the story, Christmas was invented by the Roman Emperor Constantin in the 3rd century. The Roman Empire was dying and his army consisted of men of all kinds of different religions from all over Europe. For an army to function well it's important that the soldiers stick together, and what better way is there for bonding than to celebrate together? Most nature-based religions celebrated the winter solace, the longest night of the year, which in the Roman calendar was the night from the 24th to the 25th of December. The Romans had celebrations around that time, too. So Constantin invented a celebration for the Christians – the birth of their Redeemer – and placed it at the same time. His soldiers weren't all celebrating the same thing, but at least now they could all celebrate something. Turned out his invention was a total success, and in the last 1,700 years Christmas has spread all around the world. The celebration of love. A day families and friends come together; a day people come together to celebrate their love for God but also for each other, and I think that's remarkably close to what Constantin originally wanted.