Here visual thinking is a key to the turning of the seasons…

We can start with the conglomeration of midwinter feasting / astronomical solstice / religious festivals / folk tales / new year… in various traditions & various calendars…

This is also a post-humous semi-fiction from Dale Lately, that notorious xmas-denier & contra-preneur, who regularly converted to Islam in mid-december just to avoid ‘present angst’ & other psychoanalytic agendas….  (for previous episodes see https://urban3.net/seasonals/

MID-WINTER & THE WHEEL OF TIME

in both heavens and material world… just as 100,000 years ago, the pieces of the world may fall into place… And now that Britain is no longer Christian majority, we can retell some older stories –

Once upon a time… cave dwellers turned up and lit the warmest fire on the longest night… Christians turned up at the stable where their baby saviour was born… Saint Nick turned up with folk tales of flying reindeers and fir trees… Amazon turned up with ‘fulfilment’ on 24 hour delivery…

We all turned up for the wheel of time in heavenly motion

BACK TO THE POLE (2025)

Santa finally retires in 2050 from his lucrative role as well-being influencer… back at the north pole everything is melted, and with 30 degrees of heat in summer it’s quite tropical… even the reindeer are now afloat in a repurposed sleigh, happily munching their muesli..  

It seems Mother Mid-Winter has taken charge of the material world, employing thousands of elves from the northern grottos in a new world order of sustainability cooperatives…
Meanwhile, rocked by unseen ocean currents, a small boat drifts into view, its only passenger a sleeping baby…

SANTA MEETS HIS MATCH (2024)…

a post-humous semi-fiction from Dale Lately, that notorious x-sceptic & contrapreneur, who regularly converted to Islam in mid-december just to stay ahead of the matriarchal pressure….

It seems Santa could be in his last throes of stardom… while starring in his new found roles as well-being you-tuber hosting his own ‘Fulfilment Centre’…. Meanwhile there is a powerful new force emanating from Mother Mid-Winter (née Mrs Xmas) and her followers, with messages of eco-feminist emancipation and the ‘journey of the inner elf’, way beyond base material desires…

TROUBLE AHEAD (2023)

The Elves are on the march – all the way from the north pole where the caves are now melting fast. They are already angry that their jobs and livelihoods are on the line, when news came that Santa has ‘done a runner’ and sold them out to climate activists. Their plan is to blockade the 1000000s of presents at the Amazon ‘Fulfilment Centre’ complex of warehousing and lorry parks…. But the riot police seem to have got there first.

Meanwhile Santa is holed up with the homeless round the back, talking with hooded activists, with a magical supply of fine whisky to go… They are debating the new conspiracy theory, a fiendishly cunning plot to subvert the material desires of kids around the world. Every xmas present, from Barbies to X-boxes, will contain the anti-capitalist virus “Co-ev-23”– every child infected then loses all will to consume any more, of anything, anytime, anywhere…meanwhile stray reindeer mooch around, but one deer is carrying an unusual package… a newborn baby in a crib…

THE ETERNAL BRAID (2022)

Maybe possibly there is a way through all this?? …. a procession marches right up to the police van and exchanges flowers for the instruments of oppression –

Santa and the reindeer seize the moment for a new trajectory back into the stars. 

All the words and questions begin to take shape – and all the Christmas dinners multiply so everyone can take their place – all the homeless, oppressed, depressed, repressed, lonely, abused and exploited of this great wide world, in a new kind of city of the eternal braid where everything connects to everything…

XMAS COMES EARLY (2021)

In this dark and edgy anti-christmas … Santa Claus is a climate change refugee fleeing the melting of the north pole – but the sledge is out of fuel & makes an emergency landing on the flyover (i.e. the Mancunian Way in Manchester) –

the national enforcement squad has come to arrest him as an illegal migrant – but the presents come tumbling over the edge and land on the ‘Ark’ of the tents of the homeless below – with bottles and chocolates come books and words scattered in the wind –

amidst the chaos there is a misfit homeless poet, trying to gather the words and make sense of them – meanwhile a donkey comes into view with a man and woman looking for a spare tent for the night…..

WORLD UPSIDE DOWN (2020)

FROM OCCUPY TO ELF-RISING (2013)