As Mrs A got herself killed, God was fast asleep in some hidden corner of another galaxy.

The advent and Christmas month was the highlight of the year. It was a month outshining everything, although incredibly tiring. That was why he had sneaked away for some hours, telling his son Jesus Christ to take care of the family business while he was asleep.

God was dreaming of the good, old days when his son woke him up. Jesus was impatient. He was into his third millenium, but around Christmas he was still as childish as he used to when he was only a couple of centuries old and pagan vikings were drinking blood out of sculls.  He was a good boy, but he just couldn’t do a piece of honest work. God was somewhat happy that his son didn’t become a carpenter after all. He loved him though. He was cute.

As he woke up, he got an instant update on what was happening on earth. He got all sorts of information; a girl in India wrote her name for the first time, somewhere a mayor was speaking obsessively about his innocence, a dog ate liver paste in the Netherlands and so forth and a man had just bought a big bottle of gas in order to finish it all. God was alarmed, as the man was Mrs. Lookalike’s brother. Was he really serious? And why had he bought laughter gas?

God zoomed into Mrs. Lookalike’s brother’s part of the world, the part God had made into the icy, unfriendly and remote Scandinavia. It could be this was serious. The man in question had had an unfortunate thing happen when he was going to propose to his princess the other day. And he had a record as he had tried to hang himself some years before. If he did a similar thing today and succeeded, God might need an extra plate and seat for Christmas Dinner. He always invited the year’s newcomers for his son’s birthday. It was a quite cool dinner, usually. The guests were so grateful to be in God’s place and not in his partners. They would laugh, make faces and tell jokes and little Jesus would lie under the table and giggle himself through the whole night. It was fun.

But as  he had his attention directed towards Scandinavia, he got another signal in. It looked like his returning customer Mrs. A was getting herself killed by giant turkeys. That was really stupid. How could she possibly get into a situation like that? And Mrs. A that had looked so much forward to Christmas and had even gone to prison for its sake!

God’s way of reasoning was interesting. It was true that in a way he was very, very slow. But as he could jump out of time, do a lot of really slow thinking and then jump into time again just a millisecond after he left – God could be faster than his own shadow.

And this time, God took the trouble to jump out of time and think things through:

Fact A: Mrs. A was getting herself killed. Fact B: She would end up buried under a mountain of giant turkeys and some shelving. Disturbing fact C: Her death would be spectacular and  would make headlines.

God sighed.

It was true. He wasn’t at the centre of attention anymore. Oh, those centuries, when he was! How sweet, how delightful! And now, it had reduced like a French stock pot down to Christmas – the 24th of December being the climax. And the thing was, as Mrs. A got herself killed, God would be completely forgotten in the newspapers and it would all be about Mrs. A and her death. That was a difficult one.

God’s statutes made it clear: He was almighty, omnipresent (well, not always to be honest) and fair.

The almightiness thing was an endless source of discussion. Why did God allow his partner to work on God’s creation and so on, when God was almighty and could just out-almighty him?

God felt he was just not getting into that debate anymore. He had a business partner. They had different views on just about everything. But they were partners and had a deal since the dawn of time. God was  fair and thus, he couldn’t break the deal.  End of discussion and yes, one could get a headache.

But there was another thing here  that had to be looked into.

Now that Mrs A was meeting her fate, what was fair? Should she go to his partner in the basement or should she be invited for Christmas dinner? Mrs. A was a returning customer for sure. That counted for her coming to God’s dinner.

But – she was a nuisance too. And Jesus had looked so much forward to the evening.

It was disrespectful to speak of his son as the result of a one night stand. But then – technically speaking it wasn’t totally wrong, if one just excused the language. God was never married to the virgin Mary and their relation was brief. There was no point in timing it, but it could be it wasn’t more than a night or so.

So to be fair, as God had to be, it was disrespectful, but not profoundly wrong to claim his son was the result of a one night stand. But then of course, to the person in question, Jesus, it was extremely wounding and painful. The kid just didn’t deserve it.

God sighed heavily. It was difficult being a parent and frankly, he was no expert.

And then the thing with his son being the laugh of the whole planet. That wasn’t only disrespectful, that was just wrong. Some people would laugh of Jesus, but it was in no way true and fair to say that everybody did.

To summon it all up, Mrs. A was a returning, but sometimes disrespectful customer. When she died at this very moment, she would make headlines on Earth and God would have to allow her to the Christmas dinner that she might ruin.  What a mess!

In the meantime, in the cold storage room. Mrs A was receiving the blow from another turkey. She couldn’t feel it, unconscious as she was. Deep down in her brain there was some activity though and a handful of small strings of information sieved out. Somewhere something said «son». And then it said «let me rub this in for you», but that was hopefully due to signal noise and was maybe to be overlooked. But then it continued with «..the whole planet».

Mrs A was harassing God even when unconscious. The woman came straight from hell! From where did she take it? And to think of  poor little Jesus and what his Christmas could turn into!

God had had it. He took care to check that his partner wasn’t watching, because what he did now wasn’t entirely fair, but come on, he was a dad and parents aren’t always fair.  He held out his hand and the third turkey missed Mrs. A just when it was to hit her, then the next missed her too, then the next and then the rest of them.  God just couldn’t stand the thought of having her around when they were finally going to have some fun.

Now it was time to disarm the customer. He made her wake up.

She opened her eyes. She was wounded, but she was saved and surrounded by fresh turkey. She looked up and God was there. They looked at each other for a long, long time and God felt  a wave of confidence. He wasn’t taking harassment anymore.

And as she was going to say something that he didn’t want to hear, he decided to show his almightiness once and for all.

From heaven the next, presently still unwritten issue of «European Interior Decoration» came gently falling, like a maple leaf in the fall. It landed softly by her side. On the cover she saw a picture of herself and the kids smiling their broadest smiles. Her house looked terrific and the kids were so chubby and the title read: «Welcome to my Easter Paradise». And then it said: «Inside: Get Mrs. A’s very own spring lamb recipe!».

She was speechless. Life on earth embraced more than she could imagine. She flew. She saw the planet from up there – and people were preparing for the holidays. A girl in India wrote her name for the second time, a mayor yelled that he was innocent, but nobody listened – and somewhere Mrs. Lookalike’s brother was nearly laughing himself to death, but not quite, unfortunately.

The doors to the drive outside swung open and it was the fire brigade that came to her rescue. And as she was carried out clutching the magazine and a turkey she felt a pang of gratefulness.

Ah, humanity! Ah, civilisation! The way humans help out when others are in trouble! Empathy, the main building stone of society!

Ah, what a God that created mankind! And what a fine Son! He sure wasn’t much of a carpenter, but maybe one day, he would make it!

And she was grateful as she was lain on a stretcher and given a pain killer. She looked at her earthly saviours and she wanted to speak, she wanted to tell and she wanted to share. Her heart was full to the brim, but her tongue was bound.

She was saved. She was alive. She had a turkey.

She swallowed.

Merry Christmas, she thought.

And God wiped a tear away and was happy too.

What Mrs. A didn’t know or  think about, was that stores have to use extra help during the month of December. The man in charge of the meat right now wasn’t a true professional. He was an amateur and the extra shelves he had put up to store the turkey were not properly secured. A stupid little thing like that can be fatal.

As Mrs. A climbed the shelves in her fur coat and all, she felt a slight tremor in the structure.

It made her heart beat faster, but she was not letting herself be put down by details. She continued climbing and the shelves sagged under the extra weight.

Really, she was stupid. It was the old story about  greed. Mrs A was obsessed by the big turkey on the top shelf and it became her destiny.

She was halfway up when the shelves started falling towards her.  She fell to the ground and at the sight of the giant turkeys falling, she panicked.

She was being killed! Killed by meat, germs or not! I want to be a vegetarian, she thought.

I am going to become a vegetarian!

As well known from countless tales of near-dead experiences, time is slow when death is near. Mrs A had all the time she needed to think about her latest doings as the birds were falling. The  whole advent month passed in front of her in pictures.

She saw herself with the 47 gifts. She saw the stupid little advent wreath she had made. She saw herself not become President and for a brief moment she sympathised with Al Gore and thought she would have become a travelling saint like him if she had lived to make it.

And the birds fell.

Mrs. Nemesis cried in her living room and she unwillingly saw herself throw the nice card in the junk and give the wrong card to her goddess neighbour.

And then the Medal. She still couldn’t believe that.

After that came a  picture of the DI. It was fortunately slightly out of focus. To think about she was the only one that knew Mrs. Nemesis had a digestive system!

The birds were still in the air, but falling, falling….closer now, so close, so close..

And as she met her destiny, she didn’t know that Mrs. Nemesis was crying bitter tears that fell into the traditional rice porridge with a single almond that the whole country was preparing right now, the porridge which was all about getting the almond and winning a little marzipan pig.

She didn’t know that her nice card was sitting on Mrs. Nemesis’ mantelpiece. She didn’t know that Mr. Nemesis was giving Mrs. Donut a call and she wouldn’t have imagined that Mrs. Urge and Mrs. Blockhead were secretly criticising Mrs. Nemesis’ efforts and overall policy as President in some dark corner of the local mall.

The first turkey hit her in the shoulder and the pain nearly made her  loose consciousness.

I am dying, she thought. I am dying!

She was being killed by Christmas.

It was early morning, the 22nd of December. The night had been endless. In his head all sorts of questions had churned and churned and churned. He pulled the organic silk satin bedspread to the side and sat up. His feet sunk into the deep pile of the alpaca rug that matched the bedspread so well. His wife was snoring by his side. She was a heavy snorer. No-one knew but him.

Mr. Nemesis  had come to a conclusion: He had had it. He had drunk his last cup of homemade linden flower tea. It was Christmas and really, it was the time of the year when everybody should exchange niceties and little glasses of chutney from their own kitchen, but Mr. Nemesis had felt the call of the wild for such a long time now, he just couldn’t cope anymore with over-civilisation. You just don’t when you get a call from the wild. You obey.

Their life together had resulted in a couple of wonderfully chubby kids and that was a reason good enough to be thankful for the years they had spent together.

But yet – he was a tiger in a cage and he just couldn’t go on. Tigers can’t.

He put on his bathrobe made out of  a mix of vicuna and bamboo fleece and went to brush his teeth.

And this thing with Mrs. Donut. That was what pushed his family life off the cliff.

Mrs. Donut! Ah, her charms! They had had an affair that had started this fall when Mrs. Donut was desperate to become an intern in the committee.

She had circled him in, he understood by now. Ruthless, she had targeted him as he was married to one of the most powerful lobbyists. Maybe it was because of him being a tiger in a cage that he became such an easy prey.

He had been sitting in his white office at the oval desk when Mrs. Donut had visited him for the first time. It was early fall and she had brought a little box of homemade cigar-shaped krumkaker, the traditional granny’s Christmas cakes.  She offered him a krumkake and she took one herself too. And he ate his and then Mrs. Donut sort of ate hers.

But there was very little granny-style to Mrs. Donut’s way of eating her krumkake.

Mr. Nemesis had never seen such treatment of any cake at all.

It was… it was… he didn’t even want to think about it now, several months later.

He sighed.

And then the letter came. The letter saying she put her dress in the freezer. He was being blackmailed. He couldn’t believe it. And endless phone calls followed, there was stalking in front of their house at night, and even his wife had become suspicious.

What a mess it had become.

But now, it didn’t matter anymore. He got dressed and drunk a cup of coffee.

Then he hung up the advent star his wife had bought.

As he left his home never to come back, he could see Mrs. A standing in her kitchen.

She was handling a giant turkey and it was only months later she would learn from Mrs. Lookalike that Mr. Nemesis had seen her when leaving his home.

Mr. Nemesis shuddered. Tonight he would eat industrially made chicken wings! He would eat ready-made French fries! From now on he was a free man.

«Natures Odor and Germ Control», it said on the pickup that was parked in front of Mrs. Nemesis’ house. She was having her bathroom disinfected. It was a natural thing to do. Catastrophe had struck the Nemesian Household  in the shape of the A family and given that it was the 21st of December and only three days to Christmas, it was understandable.

The only good news was that the meatballs held companies like Natures Odor and Germ Control in business.

Mrs. Nemesis wasn’t happy with the DI it appeared. It was a night that hadn’t been up to her expectations. One thing is she got so sick her life was threatened. Another thing was her marble floor had gotten stains that would never disappear. That is one of the qualities of natural stone. It tells about the past. And the past isn’t always what one would want it to be.

Mrs A’s past just got worse and worse. The only thing she knew by now, was that the future would become the present and the present would become a nightmare and the nightmare became her past that she could never forget. She wondered if God could change the past. Probably not. He would have done a couple of changes concerning his son’s family and his parents and so on by now.

She still had Mrs. Donut’s telephone. She had wanted to give it back for some days, but she had forgotten and given that Mrs. Donut had become incredibly sick when going home by bus from the Christmas play, a sickness that resulted in a Donut version of the DI on the spot so to speak, Mrs. A hadn’t really felt the need to approach her. After all, Mrs. Donut had just met her new boss and his wife on the bus. It must have been an experience, but hopefully Mrs. Donut and her boss would use it for long-term teambuilding.

She had to be brave. She tried to, at least. Everybody spoke about the meatballs that were blamed for everything. She had tried to excuse herself, but then it got out that the best-before date had expired and Mrs. A was now fair game. Fair game, but with a Medal! She couldn’t believe it.

But now it was time to think really seriously about Christmas! The turkey! She needed to get the turkey out of the freezer, the enormous turkey she bought in Sweden.

We are the 20th of December, she tried to reassure herself.  Day 8 after Hairball Day, day 5 after Dope day, and only day 2 after the DI as she had named it, meaning «the diarrhea incident».

It had been terrible.

Terrible.

Terrible.

And the hygienic aspect of it all was beyond comments.

When coming home two nights before – just after the Medal event – they had been very, very sorry to discover that the plumber hadn’t done  his job. The toilet was out of order. That in itself was terrible, because modern life sort of assumes that everybody has his own toilet. It is humiliating not to have ones own toilet. It’s stupid.

But they were lucky for once as their neighbour Mrs. Doityourself and her family was visiting her ambassador parents in Stockholm for some days and she had given her keys to Mrs. Nemesis. God was maybe a slow thinker, but Mrs. A was fast. They would borrow the keys with some everyday explanation and they would get access to the facility in question! Nobody would know and the family’s good name and honour were saved.

But the night had been full of surprises. Mrs. A had hardly had the time to come up with the plan before her kids took ill. There was crying and screaming. There was cursing. They had a stomach-ache and it was bad.

Mrs. A didn’t feel so well herself, but that was kind of expected as she had been awarded the Medal and everything. It was an emotional response. And Mr. A looked pale too, but then, his wife had been awarded the Medal (and everything) and he had slept too little lately – no wonder he got emotional.

Anyway their boys definitely needed the facility in question very soon. Mrs. A sent Mr A over to Mrs. Nemesis to ask for the keys. The kids followed him, they so much needed access to the facility that they couldn’t wait for their father to come back.

She didn’t like that so much – she was already imagining worst case scenarios.

Mrs. Nemesis opened the door. Mr A did some explaining. Then the little boys started acting strangely. Mr A continued explaining. And the boys didn’t look happy. Mrs. Nemesis said something and then Mr A explained even more, clearly more at ease with the old-fashioned answering technique than with modern question technique.

Come on!, she thought from her position by the window. Get it over with, get the keys and run!

But they didn’t run.

Mrs. A understood. She had to deal with the situation. She got her coat on and ran out of the house only to see her family disappear into the Nemesian residence. She hesitated. Should she go back inside? But Mrs. Nemesis had seen her. It was too late. She couldn’t just run out of her house and then run back in again. It would look stupid. She wanted to, but she couldn’t.

She went up to Mrs. Nemesis, swallowing and swallowing the thingabajigg stuck in her throat. She didn’t feel well herself. At the sight of Mrs Nemesis in the door opening and the elegant hall behind her, Mrs. A felt a wave of something she didn’t want to define.  It was a wave. Of something. It was internal, coming from somewhere in  the lower part of her torso. And she didn’t want to know the details.

Mrs. Nemesis looked at her with the charm of an iceberg as Mrs. A was just going to say something perfectly natural and relaxed. Then Mrs. Nemesis pointed at a door  behind her, and Mrs A. got the picture: Yes, Mrs A was sick and Mrs. Nemesis could tell. The facility in question was behind that door and Mrs A wasn’t in a position to choose. She had no choice.

She got inside the hall and then into what turned out to be the newly refurbished bathroom.

It took her breath away. The bathroom was vast. It had a high ceiling fitted with a skylight through which you could see the stars. Under the skylight there was a free-standing copper bathtub. The rainforest shower was huge and there was a true antique daybed standing on the white marble floor in a corner. And Mrs. Nemesis had had some woman come and design the lighting and the tinkling light offsetthe surface of the copper tub so well from the marble. The «Scandinavian Architecture Today» people would kill for Mrs. Nemesis’ bathroom.

That was – they would kill for it after it had been cleaned, because right now representatives of the A family were having diarrhea. She couldn’t believe it. Her family had diarrhea in Mrs. Nemesis brand new bathroom!  They. Were. Having. Diarrhea. All. Over. The. Place.

Mrs. A wanted to die. But she didn’t.

When her family was more or less done, she got them out, locked the door again and started cleaning.

It was a moment of True Insight.

What was life about, really? Was it worth it? Hadn’t she been fighting all her life? What was this thing with getting the Medal and having diarrhea in Mrs. Nemesis’ bathroom the same night?  Where was the logic? She would have to go this  through  with God. Or maybe not. Maybe she should find some therapist instead. That would be a revenge! God hated therapists.

There was a knock on the door. She did as she hadn’t heard it.  Then a new knock, another knock and then Mrs. Nemesis voice. She wanted Mrs. A to open the door and in a way that made Mrs. A follow the instructions.

Mrs. Nemesis wasn’t only beautiful. She really had her own style. That day she was all in white apart from some details. Her skinny pants were made of high quality viscose and they had a slight shine to show off her elegant curves. The white v-neck pullover was clearly made out of lambs wool with just that tiny little touch of angora fibers.

Other women would have chosen a white shirt to go with the pullover. But not Mrs. Nemesis. She might be immaculate, but she wasn’t stupid. She wore a light blue shirt under the white pullover and that was just the little, cool touch that made the outfit go from nice to fantastic. And as an even nicer little detail, there was a small embroidery on the collar of the shirt. Usually it would be an embroidered tennis racket or so – but today it was a little, red Santa Claus! How fitting! How fabulous!

Mrs. A didn’t know what to say as the smell sort of got the message through. Mrs. Nemesis was appalled.

The great rush of bad conscience and bad everything hit Mrs. A with a force she never had felt before. She had to tell everything. She had to tell about the hairball letter, how she wasn’t nuts although it could appear so, how she…

But then, as she was just going to start the whole thing, it became clear that Mrs. Nemesis was sick too and stepped into the bathroom. She looked horrified. She looked scared. She was going to throw up. Mrs. A could tell.

It all went very fast as everything else this month. In seconds Mrs Nemesis was on four legs in front of the toilet. In seconds she was vomiting in a way Mrs. A had never seen before.

Mrs. A wanted to get Mr Nemesis, but Mrs. Nemesis managed to say that he was out with the kids at some mall that was open until midnight. Then Mrs. Nemesis did that thing again. She threw up. It was horrible.

It turned out Mrs Nemesis wasn’t a brave patient. She was squealing like a pig and crying like a spoilt child. Mrs. A wanted to leave, but Mrs. Nemesis wouldn’t let her.

Many people claim that beauty comes from the inside. It doesn’t.

What came out of Mrs. Nemesis that night was at first stir-fried organic vegetables. That didn’t look too bad. They were followed by some greyish ex-meatballs from Sweden that looked less good. And from there on, it was downright terrible.

Now, Mrs. Nemesis was a true beauty so clean and spotless it was like she was only surface.

You really had to be a heterosexual man in order to imagine she had an inside at at all. But Mrs. A was now in possession of information about Mrs. Nemesis having an inside and that she was equipped with the same number of organs that we all are. She was human. Mrs. A couldn’t believe it.

And the sickness won and she found herself on four legs by Mrs. Nemesis’ side. They threw up together in Mrs. Nemesis designer toilet and Mrs. A  heard her Medal clinking and clanking against the porcelaine. She wondered if a team building expert would call it a good or a bad experience if one considered the long-term perspective. She couldn’t tell herself.

Mrs. Nemesis was so sick that they ended up at the Emergency Ward. And it was a shock to meet such a selection of neighbours that were all sick in the same way. Yesterday the doctors said it was due to bacteries often found in ground pork meat.

It was such a shame. Mrs. A wanted to die. But she didn’t.

Her Medal was still as shiny as it was yesterday. Still she felt so bad she wasn’t able to appreciate it. It felt wrong too. How could she think about the Medal with all this misery around her?

It was late in the evening and Mrs. Nemesis had made it. She wouldn’t mind if Mrs. Nemesis moved to Kuala Lumpur, but really – dying was overdoing it – she didn’t want Mrs. Nemesis dead. Come to think of it, she could accept the idea of Mrs Nemesis going through hell with lots of suffering though. But that was what had happened more or less.

But why? And why had nearly everyone gotten so incredibly sick? Tomorrow we will know, the doctors said. In the meantime, life was slow. Wednesday, the 19th of December had been endless. And she didn’t like being in the Emergency Ward. She hated it.

No need to panic yet, she told herself. It is only the 18th of December!

But she panicked.  Her heart was both heavy and beating fast. Life wasn’t easy as she went through the kitchen cupboards, replacing dry goods that had become too old.

Yesterday she had shopped for Christmas in one of those big malls in Sweden, malls that were built for herself and her compatriots, crammed with cheap meat, dairy products, sweets and beer. She felt slightly out of character when doing so – it was a thing not really acceptable in her socio-economic stratum – but it was practical and to be honest, it was half the price! She might be middle class, but she wasn’t stupid.

When she crossed the border to her own country, she blushed. Her car was overloaded and had she been stopped at the customs, it would have been highly uncomfortable. Luckily, she just drove through the whole thing and it was kind of cool that she was breaking the law for the second time in some days – only for the sake of Christmas.

But now as she tossed her old flour and got the Swedish flour in – she felt bad. She couldn’t get the hairball incident out of her head and she hadn’t even seen Mrs. Nemesis since Hairball Day. And tonight there was the Christmas play at school performed by the kids  and followed by a Christmas buffet. The whole thing organised by the Committee of course.

She didn’t feel like going, but she had to. She couldn’t let her kids down and not coming was unheard of.

Anyway – she had to bring the pork meatballs to the buffet as promised. She had bought 5kg of ground pork meat yesterday. It was so cheap she couldn’t believe it. The Swedish people clearly didn’t know basic maths. Ok, the meat was running out of time – the best before-date being yesterday. But anyway, «best before» was only a way of selling more as people would toss perfectly useable goods and buy new instead – and she was not letting herself be fooled by the food industry. And in all cases, she would not drive the whole way back to Sweden to get another batch!

She let the plumber in as they still had problems with the pipes. Then she made meatballs reflecting on the Mayor and his wife and how they would celebrate Christmas this year. And she thought about the young girl that had been so brave and told her whole story so well and the blessing it must have been to be so fully and entirely believed by the court. Everybody was on the young girl’s side. No-one had believed the powerful man and his poor, tunnel-sighted wife. It sure was a blessing.

That night she hoped to be blessed too, not by court, but with calmness, grace and composure.

When she went up to the school with her kids, she felt a pang of upcoming anxiety.  Her meatballs were pathetic. They were not luscious, velvety, aromatic meatballs speckled with rosemary, garlic and thyme. They were just plain greyish meatballs from Sweden.  She felt stupid. She would have to throw them in the junk and say she had forgotten about the whole thing.

She smiled a nervous smile to everybody in the auditorium. She sat through the whole Christmas play with the food she would toss on her lap. The kids stuttered themselves through the wise men, the angels, the Bethlehem star and the rest of it, but she couldn’t concentrate. She was agonized. She was traumatised. She was alone.

Then came the thank-yous and the speeches. Mrs. Nemesis, looking  gorgeous in pristine white, thanked Mrs. Couldntcareless, thanked Mrs. Lookalike, thanked even Mrs. Donut that had been an intern in the Committee this year, she thanked the headmaster, she thanked the teachers, she thanked just everybody. Mrs. A went from terrible to worse.

Then Mrs. Crap thanked Mrs. Nemesis for everything she had done. There was no end to it this evening. The headmaster thanked the Committee and the teachers thanked the headmaster and then the kids thanked everybody for their new football field.

And finally the final thank you. Mrs. Urge came up and spoke about the Committee’s uncommon decision this year to give their high-ranked Medal Of Outstanding Christmas Merits to a member of the community. It was not something they did every year!  Clearly it was meant for Mrs. Nemesis and Mrs. A felt she sort of had had it by now.

She got up on her feet and was going to leave when Mrs. Urge had the boobs to tell her to sit down. She sat down with her cheeks burning.

Mrs. Urge continued her unbearable speech about the merits of Mrs. Nemesis: She was maybe an outsider (Christ! Mrs. Nemesis an outsider! She is the definition of an insider!), she was using her head (What head? It’s just wrapping, don’t even look for the list of contents..!) instead of just blindly accepting the ideas in vogue at the moment! She was a deep thinker and she was innovative! (Jeez!)

-As you might have understood by now, Mrs. Urge continued, the Committee has decided to give the Medal Of Outstanding  Christmas Merits to Mrs A!

Her whole brain shut down. The ceiling opened up and Mrs. A was catapulted into Space. She moved at high speed towards the Moon clutching her meatballs. She did some brief sightseeing up there before going back towards her own planet and the chair she had just sat on. She hit the floor with a bang and tried in vain to pull her shirt down in the back to cover her undies. She was awarded The Medal! How come? Even Mrs. Nemesis wasn’t!

She had a hard time getting what Mrs. Urge said. She was shivering over her whole body.

-Mrs. A has showed us the way, Mrs. Urge said.  -Most of us will make our gingerbread, write our Christmas cards and sing some Christmas carols before making our omelettes in the morning. But Mrs. A, not so! She thinks about those that are less fortunate. The woman has a heart as well as a creative brain. Mrs. A this year, for the sake of Christmas, for the sake of love, for the sake of Mankind, went as far as going to prison!

There was like a great, common sigh in the Auditorium. Many parents looked at Mrs. A without hiding their tears.

- Mrs. A has shown real Christmas Attitude. She sang Christmas Carols to the poor criminals in prison. She let a sunray into their  wrecked lives. She did not think about herself. Now let us all think about that for a while!

Mrs. Urge was really serious now. She continued:

-Mrs. A didn’t just talk the talk. She walked the walk too.

Now people were openly crying and Mrs. Couldntcareless had to distribute some kitchen paper towels.

-Mrs. A, we humbly ask you to come up and accept the Christmas Committee’s Medal Of Outstanding Christmas Merits, Mrs. Urge said.

She got up from her chair. The applause overwhelmed her and she felt all dizzy.

And she walked the walk, the walk of Fame, the walk of Glory and the walk of Fairness up the aisle. The crowd was nearly hysteric. They loved her and she loved them. She was so grateful, so grateful and she wanted to speak. She wanted to give something back to this loving crowd.

Mrs. Urge fastened the Medal close to her heart. Mrs. A looked at Mrs. Nemesis that was crying too. Was she jealous? Mrs. A didn’t know, but it wasn’t important.

She was a winner. Finally.

There are moments in life when we all are successful. And sometimes success is thrown upon us when we least expect it. This was what happened to Mrs. A. She never thought she would be as much as seen by a church mouse during this advent month, let alone awarded the famous Medal. It was as shock. It was an honor.

What a pity that she overdid it. It took her years to overcome the shame.

She served the meatballs.

-But if you are almighty and fair, how could you let this series of  catastrophes happen?

I am not buying all those arguments about «good needs evil» and such. You have been sitting there with your hands in your lap and watched the Devil pull my pants down in front of everyone!  Come on! I might not be an important customer, I mean – I acknowledge that I am not like king Olav II Haraldsson that freed the whole country of the Norse religion way back in the Viking era, but I am a returning customer! And it wasn’t you that got me out of prison, it was palm oil.

She put the car in gear and pulled out in the street.

-Times have changed. Today we are the 17th of December 2012!  Before – like a really long time ago – people respected authorities and didn’t dare to speak up. Not anymore. It’s time for a new reformation, but this time it’s not about what’s happening down here, on Earth. It’s all about your own mind, your thoughts and attitude and so on.

- I guess it was cool when the 30-year war was going on, maybe it was cool during the Reformation and the Counter-reformation, the Inquisition was full of drama and the Renaissance was at least a challenge. Not a boring moment. Everything was about you and you were hands-on everyday. Well, not anymore!

She waited for a second before continuing.

-And now – during the Christmas season – you get a glimpse of what used to be. Churches full to the brim,  articles in the newspapers about yourself, your son and your organization, people trying at least a little bit to follow your commandments and all that. And then – in January – the whole circus just vanishes. Every year, the same thing. I know it, you know it. And in January you always get depressed. Yes, it’s hard to admit, isn’t it? You get depressed. I know that, don’t even try to say something else.

She sighed.

-Your ratings aren’t so good. Face it!

She shut her mouth for a while, letting her message get through to God.  She knew by experience that he wasn’t a fast thinker. He would reply in time though. She knew that too.

Maybe she was a tiny bit too high on herself today. There wasn’t really a good reason to be so energetic, but she had watched the sentence of the country’s stupidest mayor on tv and during the breaks in court  they played this music that made you feel you were the protagonist in a very exciting crime series.

Days were short. One could get the most scintillating winter sun for a short while, then the most fiery sunset of the planet, and then finally darkness. It was so dark.

She drove out of town. She drove past frozen fields and leafless apple trees. She drove through deserted villages and the darkness got denser.

She drove past the house where her grandmother was born, she drove past the cottage where her great-grandmother was born and she drove past the hut where her great-grandmother’s ancestors were born. The woods became more and more impenetrable, thicker and thicker.

There were no meeting vehicles. She was all by herself. Behind the car, wolves were chasing her. In the front, bears were howling and sneering. On her right hand side an elk ran, on the left hand side a reindeer. The snow fell and fell and fell and sounds disappeared.

She drove into the black,  profound woods of Sweden and soon it would be Christmas.

It had gone so fast. She didn’t really get what happened until today, the 16th of December.

She had been looking at the qualities of gingerbread dough that was for sale and there were many types slightly different in both colour and texture. It clearly was a gingerbread feinschmecker’s market as the artisans had lots of dough, but sold it in small quantities. It was neat. The Committee would be delighted to visit this place. It was so innovative.

She was a tad surprised by the clientele – she had to admit that. Honestly the other customers didn’t look so Christmassy, but the thing with Christmas was of course that you could never tell by the look of people. Some were Christmas people and some were not. Some would wear black nail polish and some would look downright terrible – that didn’t mean they weren’t part of the Christmas Community. Maybe they were just part of the avantgarde.

She had just taken her pocketbook out of her shoulder bag when there was a loud bang as the entrance door was forced open. Armed police entered the hall running and shouting. An artisan hurled all his goods into her open shoulder bag and disappeared out of the back door followed by his artisan coworkers and some customers.

Then it became just horrible. There was more running and more shouting. She stiffened. Her feet were liked glued to the ground in the same way as those of Santa Lucia when she was prosecuted. And Santa Lucia got her eyes picked out of her head. What a horror! What had she done to deserve this!

Along with the other customers she was pushed down on the floor, she was handcuffed and a policeman rested his foot on her head. She thought she wouldn’t get any baking done today. It was awful and she started to breathe heavily. Her breath was so heavy, so heavy and it came so quick. She was hyperventilating.

That was yesterday. Right now she sat in a waiting cell, waiting for her lawyer Mr. Cheapo. Yesterday he had gotten her out of the cell she had shared with the other customers. She had felt she didn’t really belong there although her Christmas carols had cheered up the situation.

She had been interrogated by an investigator. It had been a shock to learn that the dough actually was hashish. She wondered what kind of gingerbread men that would have made.

But now it was time to get the truth on the table.

She told the investigator about her whole journey, how she wanted to be a nice human being, how she didn’t want to handle treacle in the kitchen and how much she hated palm oil. And then she told about the Christmas market where you had to be a jam extremist to find anything useful and how she had found the hashish market by chance not understanding what it was.

It was a good thing it was Saturday the 15th of December. Had it been a weekday, it would have been horrible in the streets considering the snow storm and all.

The world was white. The sky was white. The air was white. Wind was coming from the North and snow would soon cover the whole planet, including the spot where her kid had found Mrs. Donut’s telephone.

It really was her telephone. Mr. Nemesis had answered and used Mrs. Donut’s first name. The sudden insight into the world of Things Hidden, Withheld and Concealed made her speechless. She so much wanted to be a premise provider and start up a conversation, but she couldn’t.  She flung the iPhone on the floor, ran into the bathroom and locked the door.  Was there a link between Mrs. Nemesis crying in her living room and the listing of Mr. Nemesis as Santa Claus? She didn’t know. But she knew there was something rotten in the Nemesian household and that was scandalous.

Scandal or not, it was only nine days to Christmas now and it was time to make gingerbread.

She had read several articles in the paper about gingerbread traditions. In one anthropologists had claimed they could tell what women were like as mothers as well as human beings only by looking at their gingerbread and that was of course disturbing news. Another one spoke about the use of palm oil in commercially made gingerbread dough and a third one was about the mess one invariably got when handling the treacle needed to make you own dough at home.

The thing was, she wanted to be a nice human being. She also did not want palm oil and it would be lovely to keep treacle out of the kitchen. It was such a mess. But then she mustn’t forget she was a premise provider. No need to include the stupid ideas of besserwissers in her life.

She knew what the solution was. She would go to one of the artisan Christmas markets. Maybe they would sell Artisan Gingerbread Dough, free of palm oil and made by true artisans and their grandmothers. That would do the trick.

She went downtown in the heavy snow.

Christmas markets were  fun. They popped up by the beginning of December and evaporated some weeks later. Usually they were held in old industrial buildings in the less glamorous parts of town, in big halls so cold you could sell frozen goods without a freezer.

There was basically two kinds of markets – the first one being the typical crafts market. Here customers would find ice-clogged artisans selling  just about everything from home- knitted mittens to home-knitted gloves. Then there was the Christmas food market. Here artisans would meet up at dawn in heavy survival gear and they would sell everything one could imagine from homemade honey to homemade jam. Customers would have to defrost the precious goods when coming home of course, but that was peanuts.

She walked down Hystery Lane and took to the right at Rudolph   Square and there was the market.

Half an hour or so later she came out  in a state of disappointment. Yes, she knew it was mostly a jam and honey market, but still she had thought there would be one single artisan selling Artisan Gingerbread Dough! But not so. They had a severe hang-up on jam. Darn it. She couldn’t stand the idea of handling treacle in her kitchen.

She walked towards the bus stop and threw a glance into the narrow Pepper Street. She stopped. Something was going on. There seemed to be some sort of market here too. Could it be sort of «the real artisan’s market»? The place  artisans would go to by gifts for their artisans friends?

She went into the street and she was sure now. It was the artisans’ artisan market.  A big man scrutinized her as she slipped in the door and the sight of what was inside took her breath away.

They sold nothing but  gingerbread dough.