It's the silly season!

[Pæs]

It's the silly season and we all know what that means!

First, the bells. The rising bells born as an electric buzzing in the ears, gradually taking form as a primal fear struggles between recognition and terrified suppression of ancient memory. Parents hurry their children to bed, desperately investing their hope in the wisdom that "if you don't see them, they don't see you".

"You'll be sorry if you're awake when Santa turns up!"

Traditions of forgotten origin ensure that the shopping is done, the house is stocked up, there is no cause to leave the comfort of the home as The Good Holy Man rides into town atop a horse which some say has eight legs and four heads... and on every street, children are seen darting about in the snow, their faces blackened with soot. Nobody asks why the bad children, the curious children, are delivered coals in their beds or where they are on Christmas morning or why sometimes there are teardrops on the packages that materialise beneath the tree.

And the toys, opened early, then dropped at the mouth of the fireplace are quietly tidied away. And the fading bells, gradually losing form as a primal fear rejects recognition for terrified suppression and dismissal of the notion that at its peak, that cacophony may have had a voice pleading "Won't somebody please cancel Christmas?"