Every Christmas, Judas Iscariot is let out of Hell. Most people never leave, not even once, and they did not betray Our Lord and Savior to his agonizing if necessary death, so you might not expect him to get special treatment. In fact, Judas leaves Hell on a regular basis. As this infamous man told St. Brendan the Navigator, that night long long ago when the saint and his companions came across him on a frozen sea, he is released from Hell on Sundays, for the twelve days of Christmas, and a couple additional feast days beside.
The demons do not wonder over his privileges. They assume that this freedom is merely one more exquisite punishment. They are half right, which is the same thing as being all wrong. Demons don’t know anything.
For hundreds of years, Judas visits that rock in the middle of the sea and looks up at the stars whenever it’s time to go. That he might go other places does not occur to Judas. After Hell, as he’d assured St. Brendan, the rock in the middle of the ocean is pretty great, so he is hardly looking for extra favors. Still, after almost two thousand years of going to the rock, give or take a few decades, Judas wonders, for the first time, if he could be permitted to go somewhere else. He makes inquiries. The demons, he learns, have orders to let Judas go wherever he wants. They just never told him.
(Hell really is a terrible place.)
Judas, overwhelmed, asks for a map. Even though he knows he has been in Hell for a long time, he dares not go back to Judea. He will simply pick a place on a whim and see what happens. He closes his eyes and prepares himself.
Then he opens them.
“One thing,” he says to the demon waiting to let him out. “Are there any other things you haven’t told me?”
“The number of things of which you are personally unaware,” says the demon, “number beyond the grains of sand on the shore. For instance, general relativity dictates—”
“Let me clarify,” says Judas. “Is there anything you’re supposed to tell me, or which you’re supposed to do for me, which you might have neglected to tell me before, because I hadn’t thought to ask?”
“Ah…” says the demon.
“Spill it,” says Judas.
Not for nothing had he always been the apostle left in charge of the money.
And so—equipped with funds, appropriate clothes, knowledge of the language, a hotel reservation, and a general sense of almost two millennia of world history and ecclesial development—Judas Iscariot finds himself in New York City, Christmas Day, 2009. More exactly, he finds himself outside of St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village. Midnight Mass is about to begin. Judas stands outside the sanctuary, looking in, first at the crowd and then, reluctantly, at the giant crucifix on the wall. He thinks the concept is tasteless, even offensive. He thinks it’s tacky. He thinks the incense is overdone. He thinks it’s not a very good likeness. He thinks he hates himself.
He walks away.
There’s knowing that you’re going to show up in a future one thousand nine hundred and seventy-six years after your own death—a future of incredible technological advancements and equally incredible levels of noise, smog, and dirt—and then there’s the reality. In his first hours in New York, Judas wonders if he might be allowed to go back to Hell early if he asks nicely. He tries jumping in front of a taxi cab, but it does not hit him. A few more experiments lead him to understand that, like Cain before him, Judas has been placed under divine protection.
Judas experiences this protection as sarcastic.
It’s snowing, but Judas, thanks to his status of not really being “alive,” and also his puffer coat, does not feel the cold. He walks up a wide, brightly lit road he’ll later learn is called Fifth Avenue. After an hour of walking, he can tell the space around him has become glamorous. There are gigantic displays behind glass storefronts. A silver mirror world that reflects the lights around them. A woman in white flanked by two green horses. A different woman with two white bears. “Santa Claus,” a concept he understands thanks to his quick education, looms in another window, looking away from Judas with an expression he personally finds suspect.
Hands in his pockets, Judas studies the window displays with increasing frustration. The displays are beautiful, he supposes, but he doesn’t understand them. He does not like this city where the snow is already turning black in the streets. The lights everywhere. You could not even see his friends of these many hundred years, the stars. And the poverty. What was the point of these oversized toys?
That’s another thing, Judas thinks to himself. Of course in the grander scheme of things, certainly in the grander scheme of their relationship, he was more in the wrong than Jesus. He wouldn’t argue that point. Still, Jesus should have heard him out about that expensive bottle of perfume, the one that woman dumped all over his feet. It should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Maybe Judas’s motivations were a little spiteful. OK, they were spiteful. He’d had a point, though. Jesus should have heard him out. Jesus should have.…
Judas hails a cab and tells the driver the name of his hotel. When he opens his wallet he finds the exact fare and tip. You never trusted me, he thinks. You never, never trusted me.
At the hotel, Judas signs in as “Judas Iscariot,” which the hotel clerk definitely thinks is a joke. Behind the desk there’s luggage that’s been waiting for him. Once he’s ridden in the terrifying box known as an “elevator” and arrived at his room, he opens the luggage. Clothes for the next twelve days. He unfolds a sweater and holds it up. It’s purple, a color Judas knows is no longer fantastically valuable but which still feels unreal to hold in his own two hands. Somehow the mundane fact that everybody can wear purple in this new world makes him feel more like an alien than the cars, the neon lights, or the store displays.
In that moment, Judas is overwhelmed with rage. The purple sweater, soft as the snow falling outside, might as well be made of thorns. He wants to set the luggage and its contents on fire. Yet he knows that if he does, somehow, a new suitcase with a new set of clothes will be there for him the next day, and the day after that, because he will not be allowed to interfere with whatever Jesus has designated for him.
I hate you, Judas thinks. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
Judas sulks through Christmas itself, reading the Gideon Bible in his hotel room to see how the others wrote about him. Nothing flattering, though then he wouldn’t expect it. Judas feels that he did have his good points and that a truly accurate Gospel would reflect that he hadn’t been all bad. Furthermore, he doesn’t know who Luke is or where he gets all his authority. You weren’t there, he thinks, grumpily. I was there. Not that anybody cares what I have to say.
The day after Christmas, he leaves to go for another walk. He isn’t really sure what else to do. On the rock, he never had to think about this sort of thing. He’s beginning to appreciate the simplicity of sitting on a rock. Maybe he’ll go back there for Sundays. In any case, New York City has not improved. The snow has become even dirtier after a day. Judas considers that so too are the works of man. The people of New York are fastidiously clean, he’s noticed, but why did they even bother? They are wading in filth every second of the day. He turns down one street and then another.
So many monuments to vanity. So much garbage. So much waste.
There is nothing good in this world, Judas thinks. Nothing, nothing good.
Judas is back in front of St. Joseph’s. There’s a handwritten sign on the fence outside offering confession outside the usual hours. Right now, in fact, as Judas can and does ascertain by looking at the watch on his wrist. Thanks to his demonic education, Judas is aware of the purpose of confession, and for a moment he wonders he could go in, even though he’s dead, and even though he’s Judas. He imagines the scene:
Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I am Judas Iscariot.… I repurposed funds for my own use thrice, fornicated with a prostitute twice, and betrayed Our Lord to his crucifixion once. Also, one act of suicide.
But then even if the priest believed him, Judas thought, weren’t there certain sins that had to be sent higher on up? Would he have to be sent to the Pope? Here he balks. He can imagine going to a representative of Christ, but a representative of Peter is another matter. In all the scenarios Judas has imagined in which he is deemed to have served his time, the dream always ends the moment he pictures Peter graciously welcoming him. The idea of being the object of Peter’s magnanimity is too much to bear. And then all the rest. Smiling, benevolent.…
No, he couldn’t stand it. He’s seized with the urge, barely resisted, to spit on the pavement. Instead, he turns and continues down Sixth Avenue.
After all, he thinks, I had the real thing. I had the real thing.
For New Year’s Eve, Judas Iscariot goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It is a strange experience. As he looks at the fragments of his own, long past civilization, he wonders why anybody has bothered so carefully to preserve these things. Pagan art. Clay pots. He’s disgusted by the mummies, at the thought that the people of this future time have so little sense of reality and propriety that they not only break into tombs but display the dead. He leaves the past and makes his way toward the art of this present. Frankly Judas doesn’t care for that either. If it’s not too blurry, it’s too angular. If it’s not too garish, it’s too washed out.
He wanders through the rooms, having a bad time, and then he sees it: a painting that is, unmistakably, of him, he, himself. Arm around Jesus’s shoulder. Lips stretched toward his cheek. As with the many crucifixes on display that Judas has not quite been able to avoid seeing, his first thought is that it is not a very good likeness. The painting is washed out and everybody in it looks, to his eyes, a little sickly. Maybe that’s on purpose, but he doesn’t care for it.
Nevertheless, there’s something in the painting that holds his attention. The look on the other Judas’s face is right. You can tell he already regrets this not-yet-completed but nonetheless irrevocable action. Jesus has reached out to take his hand, which did not happen, but Judas appreciates the artistic effect. In fact everybody in the painting seems to be clinging to Jesus, and you can’t tell if it’s because they want to keep him safe or because they don’t want him to run away. The longer Judas looks at it, the more he feels as if this artist made an effort to understand him, an effort sadly lacking in the works of Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke, whoever Luke was.
No one else is stopping to look at this painting.
He isn’t surprised. It is a degenerate and tasteless time.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Judas checks out of the hotel and walks outside. He is a little relieved to be leaving, though he’s not looking forward to his return to Hell. He knows that the demons are unhappy that he’s outsmarted them and have no doubt exercised some creativity in his absence. He takes his customary walk around Manhattan and then, in the eleventh hour, goes into a bar. One thing Judas will give the present credit for is its plenitudes of alcohol. He orders an aged Scotch and sips it slowly. That is not quite enough alcohol to take him through the hour, it turns out, so he orders another. It’s not like he has to worry about paying for it.
Shortly after Judas has started on his fourth Macallan 25, a scruffy man, clearly already drunk, slides onto the stool next to him. The drunk orders a double Jameson and a glass of water. To Judas, he comments: “Every year, you know, I hate this time more and more.”
Judas looks at the drunk. He’s filled with the desire to tell the truth for once.
“I’m Judas Iscariot,” he tells the drunk. “You’ve got no idea.”
“Ah,” says the drunk. “That’s a hard load to carry.”
“You believe me?” says Judas.
“It’s not exactly a name people want,” says the drunk. “It might as well be true. But if you’re Judas Iscariot, shouldn’t you be—well—” (he gestures downward with his hands) “—well—”
“They let me out for Christmas,” says Judas. “Twelve days.”
“Twelve drummers drumming,” says the drunk, which Judas finds a non sequitur. “I wouldn’t have thought it worked like that.”
“It doesn’t,” says Judas. “Only for me.”
“Huh,” says the drunk again. “Jesus love you that much?”
“No,” says Judas. “He hates me that much.”
“He’s got a funny way of showing it.”
“You didn’t know Jesus,” says Judas.
“Maybe you could leave,” the drunk comments, very carefully, not quite making eye contact with Judas, “if you just.…”
“If I just said ‘oh, Jesus, I’m so terribly terribly sorry’?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s not how it works,” says Judas.
“Sure,” says the drunk. “If you say so.”
“They’re all laughing at me,” says Judas. “That prick Peter and the rest. Not like Peter covered himself in glory either,” he adds, feeling the old anger come back. “None of them were any better than me. None of them…. Well, I mean, until the end.”
“Here’s a funny thought,” says the drunk, who seems more and more sober by the moment, not that Judas is paying very close attention. “People being no better than you… you could also say, they are no worse. I mean, if you said, Peter isn’t any worse than me, so what makes Peter different.… You’d think it would mean the same thing, but it doesn’t.” He takes a sip of his Jameson. “The math works out the same but the meaning is opposite. Have you ever tried thinking of it that way?”
But Judas has buried his head in his hands. He isn’t listening. Now that his return to Hell is imminent, he can only feel terror and regret. In fact, Judas is so overwhelmed that he misses that the drunk has now become an object of terror for everybody else in the bar, because his hands are bleeding, his body is shining, and his glass of water has turned into wine. Judas only feels the hand on his shoulder, and it feels, to him, like any other hand. Not even familiar.
“Judas,” says the drunk.
Judas doesn’t look up.
“Have you ever tried it?” asks the drunk, who knows the answer. “Asking.”
“No,” says Judas. “It’s not as if he doesn’t know I wish I hadn’t done it. He knows everything, so he knows that.”
The clock begins striking twelve.
“Why did it have to be me?” asks Judas. “Why couldn’t it have been one of the others? Why were they all so much better than me? Why did he even chose me to follow him at all, if I was so worthless?”
“Maybe—” begins the drunk.
The clock finishes striking. The two men vanish, leaving behind a bar full of patrons reevaluating their drinking habits. Judas Iscariot is in Hell, which, in truth, he is allowed to leave for good any time he wants, if he ever figures out how. The demons don’t know that. That’s not surprising. Demons don’t know anything.
Holy smoke (really!)!!! You really ended the year with a banger, didn't you?! Outstanding, absolutely outstanding! <3
this one is really neat. i’ve been grateful for these this year, cheers to you.