Aftermath of the Nativity

Miss Snippet felt she'd done very well not to laugh until she was back in the privacy of the staffroom.  Then she'd thrown back her head and howled with laughter until tears ran down her face and her stomach ached like she was on her period.  She'd staggered over to a lounge-chair, her shoulders shaking with the effort of holding the laughter in, sat down in it and laughed again, bringing yet more tears to her eyes.  Finally she ran out of laughter, and wiped her eyes with a tissue she found in her pocket that only had eye-liner on; naturally her waterproof mascara had run.
"It wasn't that funny," said Miss Devonport, without any of her usual reproof.
"Oh come on!" said Miss Snippet, finding her colleague standing in front of the coffee cups holding what looked like a half-bottle of Scotch.  "Santa just died out there in our nativity play!  It's just like that story you told me about, everyone dies at Christmas."
"It wasn't a story, it was an essay," said Miss Devonport, "and the last line of it was, it's not Christmas until everyone's dead."
"Well, I was close enough," said Miss Snippet.  Her sides hurt as well as her stomach.  "And it was funny."
She'd been sat near the back, on a chair that wobbled, trying not to yawn through any of the speeches or obviously be checking her iPhone while the third year students put on a Nativity play.  Despite her objections Mary, Joseph and Jesus were all played by white kids, and the donkey, Shepherds and one wise man were played by kids with other ethnic backgrounds.  Despite Miss Devonport's objections, Santa was also one of the wise men, and despite both of them objecting, Santa was played by some gluttonous nephew of the Headmaster, demonstrating once again his easy grasp of nepotism.  That his nephew was in his thirties was apparently unimportant, with the Headmaster saying that the man looked the part far better than any of the students.  Miss Snippet had been tempted to point out Mark Andretti in the fifth form who had five o'clock shadow by ten o'clock most days and an impressive physique that bodybuilders would admire, but had resisted.  She was certain the only way he could be doing it was to be stealing insulin from the diabetic kids and growth hormone from Freddy Glazer who was medically a midget.  She was so certain that one of them would sooner or later either have to tell on him or die that she'd got a hundred pounds riding on there being a death-due-to-bullying story in the papers by the end of the year.
Santa had turned up to the play drunk, and Miss Devonport had immediately called security to have him thrown out.  Instead, the Headmaster had turned up and given her a stern talking to about respecting other members of staff, leaving her bemused and near tears.  Santa had gone on stage anyway, two scenes early, and urinated in one of the pots for the potted palms, starting angry whispers among the parents.  Once again, Miss Snippet suspected that the whispers would have been far less angry if it had been Mark Andretti getting undressed on stage.
And then.  And then in Santa's actual scene they'd reached the Hilton Stable where Mary and Joseph had elected to spend the night in the King-size Deluxe stall with house-trained oxen, self-heating manger and 24-hour room service and Santa had collapsed, pushing the non-white wise man off the stage and into the orchestra pit and falling on top of the manger.  While people were scampering about trying to pick the unfortunate wise man up and make sure that he was alright the manger overheated underneath Santa and set fire to his beard.  That was made of polyester, as was his hair and his jacket, so in a handful of seconds Santa was a butter-ball of flame, barely conscious yet trying to stand up.  The terrified children had retreated, and many of them were screaming at the sight of Santa burning up.  The Headmaster had left for the evening, so it was up to his illegally imported janitor, Lupo, to run on stage and throw a mop-bucket over him.  There was a spectacular hiss, most of the flames went out, steam billowed across the audience and everyone started coughing and choking from the quantity of black-market bleach that Lupo had had in the bucket.  Realising that he'd effectively tear-gassed the audience, Lupo had attempted to save the situation by pointing dramatically at Santa and shouting, "He lives!" at the top of his voice.  As he did so, and people struggled to clear their eyes to see this heroism, Santa vomited a large quantity of red-wine all over the stage, which predictably enough everyone took to be blood.
The ambulances took away most of the parents first, largely because Miss Devonport had shut Santa in the men's toilets and was getting the parents seen to.  When she 'remembered' that Santa had gone to the toilets, the ambulance staff found him with his head in the sink in four inches of water, so close to dead as to make no difference.
Miss Snippet thought it was the best Nativity play she'd seen in years.
"We'll never have our Yule celebration now," said Miss Devonport unhappily.  She added half-a-cup of Scotch to her coffee.  "Why did Santa have to die?"
"Oh yes we will," said Miss Snippet.  "I have plans!"

Plans for Christmas

Miss Snippet had her head in her hands, her elbows on her desk, and was trying hard not to cry.  She heard the classroom door open and the swooshing noise of the caretaker's mop bucket, but she didn't look up.  Lupo, the caretaker that the Headmaster had found on a geography fieldtrip and brought back (possibly illegally) barely spoke English and appeared to regard the teaching staff with contempt.  Not entirely unlike the Headmaster.
"Are you alright?"
Miss Snippet sat bolt upright, her hands slapping down on the desk and her fingers scrabbling for her red pen.  That voice belonged to Miss Devonport, the teacher in charge of religious education and the closest thing Miss Snippet had to a friend at the school.  She certainly wasn't anyone Miss Snippet wanted to show weakness in front of.
"I'm fine," she said automatically, then realised that Miss Devonport must have come in with Lupo.  "Well, I have a headache.  I don't really think I should drive home with it, so I was waiting here for it to subside a little."
"Oh, tell me about headaches!" said Miss Devonport.  She pulled a student's chair out from a desk and sat on the desk; the chair was far too small for her.  "I just finished marking essays, and one of them finished with It's not Christmas until everyone's dead.  It's just so depressing!"
"Well, Christmas can be quite depressing," said Miss Snippet wondering what the rest of the essay must have been like.
"No!  Christmas is a spiritual holiday!"
"As in, a time when the spirit goes on holiday leaving the body behind to behave abominably to our relatives?"
Miss Devonport glared at her, and Miss Snippet subsided a little.  "No.  And I meant that the essay was depressing.  How little our students respect tradition and festival.  I'm going to talk to the Headmaster and see if we can't have a little festival of our own this year."
"You can't go bringing religion alive like that!" Miss Snippet, whose enterprising conversion of her students into brickies and navvies had lead to an investigation by the Local Education Authority, disliked the idea of someone else getting away with it.
"I'm not suggesting we have a Virgin birth," said Miss Devonport, tittering a little and trying to hide it behind a hand.
"Have you seen the sixth form girls?"
"You're always so cynical, Hattie," said Miss Devonport.  "No, I thought we could do something for Yule; that's practically like Halloween these days."
"As in, it involves big fires, rich foods, and attempts to placate angry ghosts?"
"Well... yes, I suppose so.  If that's what sells it."
Miss Snippet looked surprised, having expected another telling off from Miss Devonport.
"That sounds like it could be fun," she said, thinking of her own angry ghosts.  "Some of the boys in my class were doing rather well with the labouring, I think we could easily teach them lumberjacking and find ourselves a Yule log."
"I thought you weren't allowed to do anything like that again?  That Inspector seemed very... masculine, for a woman.  I was quite scared of her."
"I'm not allowed to get caught doing anything like that again," said Miss Snippet.  The Inspector had been her sister.  "But we can hide this as a joint class project."
"Oh!  Oh well, let's do that then.  I'll talk to the Headmaster in the morning!"
"Oh good," said Miss Snippet, watching as Miss Devonport actually skipped out of the room.  Then she put her head back in her hands, her elbows back on her desk, and tried to remember where in her litany of despair she'd gotten to.  She was interrupted by Lupo poking her with a mop.
"Go 'ome," he said, poking her again to emphasize his words.  "You making classroom untidy."