Notes from my Knapsack 12-10-20

Notes from my Knapsack 12-10-20

Jeff Gill

Tales of mystery and imagination

___

You almost certainly will end up somewhere or another hearing Andy Williams sing for you these words: "There'll be scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago…"

That line is from "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Edward Pola & George Wyle, a duo with no other hits worth mentioning. Their lasting contribution to Christmas music (and song writing in general), it occasionally raises eyebrows with that line about "scary ghost stories."

If you go back into Victorian times, before the feast and festivities of Christmas had become more what we're accustomed to today, ghost stories by the fireside were fitting, on these longest nights of the year in the weeks just before the winter solstice (Monday, Dec. 21 this year). Long dark cold nights, a group huddled close around the hearth, and a chill already on your spine as you face the warming flames: what better?

The hinge on which a more modern Christmas observance swings, 1843's "A Christmas Carol" is where Charles Dickens gives us not one but four ghosts (Marley, Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come), along with the turkey and pudding and punch, the ornamented tree and sharing of presents that this novella helped to mainstream as a "typical" Christmas celebration. With the parties and banquets and family dinners, the ghosts began to be shoved into the more dimly lit corners if not banished entirely.

In England, even nearby Canada, ghost stories are still seen as part of a usual string of Christmas traditions. Electrically lit, commercially powered, media ready American Christmastide really doesn't have much room for scary ghost stories, except that one fossil remnant as Andy's shade sings in his ugly sweater (I think he's the one who single-handedly made loud patterned sweaters a seasonal commonplace from his TV specials).

Yet most Christmas commemorations in individual households are haunted, in my experience. This year, our home is even more filled with bits and pieces of Christmases from other households, now broken up or being slowly dismantled. My childhood stocking, rediscovered and on our mantle, my wife's musical plastic cathedral glowing on the sideboard, and her parents' magnetic skating party, all new ghosts at the feast this Yule from packing and moving earlier in this strange year.

And for most of our marriage, my great-aunts' last ceramic attack on the multi-piece manger scene graces our mantle; my mother's World War II plastic creche set from the Ben Franklin, in a stable made by her father from the barn wood of his parents' last farm. Oh, and the tree: ornaments from first married Christmas, child's first Christmas, first Christmas in our own home, handmade ornaments from relatives whose names we stretch our memories to recall . . .  haunted? It's a spiral of ghosts, mostly happy ones, generally benign, all the way up to the tree top angel whose story goes back to a tragedy which turned out well and is too long to tell here. But the ghost of those days haunts me, and I want them to, which is why that angel is always there.

Sometimes it takes a ghost to remind us of the glory of Christmas, long ago and still possible this year.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been known to tell a ghost story or two. Let him know how you're haunted this Christmas season at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.