Ghost Stories at Christmastime

Arise, shine, for your light has come,
  and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
    and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
    and his glory appears over you.
--Isaiah 60:1-2 NIV

My wife loves Christmas music, so since a local radio station began playing Christmas songs 24-7 in early November the stereo in our den has been blasting yuletide carols. For weeks now, I’ve been puzzling over a line from “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” which says along with parties, roasting marshmallows and caroling “there’ll be scary ghost stories.” Scary ghost stories? At Christmas? 

I should have realized Christmastime is an appropriate time for ghosts, I guess, since, as I mentioned in Sunday’s sermon, my wife’s favorite book is Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. This beloved classic is filled with ghosts. Thanks to her, I’ve actually sat down and read the book, instead of relying on its many adaptations. Most of the film and TV versions leave out what I consider its most haunting scene. In addition to the ghost of Jacob Marley and the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future, Scrooge discovers the whole world is filled with ghosts! 

The ghost of Scrooge’s friend and business partner Jacob Marley explains to him that he is doomed in his afterlife to walk the earth fettered in chains attached to his accounting ledgers. Because he loved money more than people, he must forever wander the earth seeing the suffering of humanity but be unable to help them. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the ghost leads Scrooge to the window, through which Scrooge sees the following horrific vision:

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. 

To me, this vision of a world of tortured spirits makes A Christmas Carol into a story much scarier than the horror movies released around Halloween. No wonder this scene is left out of most adaptations of Dickens’ tale—who wants to ponder such things at Christmastime? No one wishes to imagine themselves among such a tortured spectral host. It’s far better to let Scrooge go through his journey with our smug belief that he deserves such a haunted morality lesson and we do not. 

Yet, the short days and the long cold nights around the winter solstice are made for self-reflection, and at such times nagging doubts about our superiority to Scrooge have a way of sneaking into our minds. A recent article in The Smithsonian describes how our pagan ancestors held perhaps a more honest understanding about how the long nights around solstice made for a time ripe with spirits. The lights from yule logs were meant to keep such spirits at bay. One religious studies professor notes, “The darkest day of the year was seen by many as a time when the dead would have particularly good access to the living,” Who knows what warnings the dead might bear to the living? 

Perhaps 2020 is an especially good time for us to take note of the ghostly aspects of Christmastime. Our isolation and fear cannot entirely be banished by the trappings of the Christmas season. When the glow from the screens of our phones, tablets and TV’s subsides, we are left to ponder our lives, our deaths and what they all mean, if anything. 

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I believe many people, myself included, often live as if they were neither alive nor dead. The ghastly vision Scrooge saw outside his window speaks not to our afterlife but the capital “L” Life we are missing in our present existence. Frederick Buechner has this to say about ghosts: 

What keeps ghosts going seems to be usually some ancient tragedy they can't cut loose from or some dramatic event they are perpetually reenacting or some unfinished business they never seem able to resolve. They are so shadowy that it's hard to believe they exist. Some of the more spectacular hauntings . . . suggest they may have grave doubts on the subject themselves. It seems to be that if they can only make somebody's hair stand on end, possibly their own even, it helps convince them they aren't just figments of their own imagination. They prefer deserted places because they feel deserted. They disappear at cockcrow because the idea of seeing themselves, or being seen, for what they truly are scares the daylights out of them. If you want to see one, take a look in the mirror someday when you yourself are feeling particularly haggard and shadowy. 

It turns out we aren’t as different from Scrooge as we like to think. Our misplaced priorities and misspent lives sneak into our awareness on these long dark nights around Christmas. This is the reason we light candles and remind one another of the "anti-ghost story," the one  about God’s light entering the world to save us from our ghost-like selves. As we read the promises of the prophets once more, promises given millennia ago but still available to us now, we realize, along with Scrooge, a different sort of life is possible: 

Arise, shine, for your light has come,
    and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
    and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
    and his glory appears over you.

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples