He exhales a hah like a laugh, low and soft. He reaches up to rub his brow, and never mind how it only adds to the streaks of ash between his eyes.

"It's a special time of year," says God to his child, without looking up, "when you ask your parents to buy you an Xbox."

It's the same weary deadpan as usual, which says nothing good about the usual state of him. But he scrubs the dirty pads of his fingers back through his hair, as though trying to rouse back to wakefulness, and says:

"It's a celebration of a beginning."

And there's the irony, because all this looks like is an end.