Every year the little wooden huts go up in the city centre for the Christmas market in Abbey Green, under the ancient sycamore tree.

And every year, when the shoppers have gone home and the streets ring with the occasional footstep of a lost traveller or late-comer, the elves creep inside the makeshift garden sheds and make toys, hats and all things Christmassy. Not because they have to or there is nowhere else to do it, but because it is traditional; there should be magic at Christmas, especially in the realms of the ordinary everyday goings on of the city. Magic happens in the most unlikely places.

They joke, as they work, about being gnomes, for it is gnomes that might traditionally be found near garden sheds. They carve, glue and hammer softly in the darkness, which they do not mind because elves can see in the dark. The tap, tap from their hammers is drowned by the noise of the revellers as they spill out of the bright pub doorways laughing and shouting into the square, or are carefully timed for when the abbey clock nearby strikes the hour.

Night after night, for the ten days of the Christmas market, the elves tap, sew, and sing softly of the old days in the underground caverns. Every morning, the stallholders arrive and wonder at the tiny scrapings of wood and threads of fabric that they are sure were not there when they closed up the night before. But, since their goods are intact, they dismiss it from their thoughts, set up their merchandise, fetch cups of tea, and chat in the frosty air, hands wrapped around mugs held close to their chests.

Early in the morning when the square is deserted, you can still just see the glittery aura of last night’s magic surrounding the huts grouped under the old sycamore tree. The tree appears to sparkle with something more than the frost on the bold, white lights strung over its bare branches. The sheen on the cobbled road gleams, as if the most delicate golden cobweb floats just above the surface. You can sniff the faintly acrid taste of magic in the air.

Later, the spell is broken as shoppers rush by seeking that elusive perfect gift, diving in and out of the gaudy shop doorways; their feet kept in motion by the medley of Christmas carols that overlap each other as they scurry from store to store.

The two hundred year old sycamore tree remembers a different world. Once there were carriages and horses with steaming breath, hot chestnut sellers and gentlemen wearing top hats. Now there are mobile phone shops and exhaust fumes, plastic packaging and teenagers with multi-coloured hair. But, underneath the brittle façade, there is still a sense of magic if you tease it out from the brashness of commercialism, the glittery falseness and the plastic pop-up Christmas trees.

The elves still come, although there are less of them each year.

An icy breeze sighs through the wire-laden branches of the sycamore tree. The plastic bulbs clunk dully. The leaves shifting over the cobbles below whisper a lament to the passing of a different kind of season.



© Jude Parsons. Nov, 2007

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