The Ghost of Christmas Past

Most of us have read the Charles Dickens Classic where the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge devoid of any charitable spirit and mirth one Christmas Eve is visited by a collection of ghosts, of Christmas Past, Christmas Future and Christmas present.

Most of us depending on our time zones and religion are celebrating Christmas present today. For many it’s the most meaningful holiday of the year and it’s most joyous time.

As I am approaching my impending 5th decade of life on good old planet earth the spirit of Christmas hasn’t much changed from year to year but the celebration of it has in a good many ways.

Loved ones once present have passed and no longer amongst us, but so too are some of the traditions that society has altered in it’s sometimes overly litigious ways, most people say Happy Holidays now, instead of Merry Christmas so as to not offend anyone. Nativity scenes that in my younger years were almost prerequisite for Any Town and Every Town USA are mostly gone and in the municipalities that still have them they are usually grouped together with Menorahs and Stars of David and Happy Kwanzaa signs. Things like Christmas Caroling are almost obsolete in most places.

Yet the core tradition endures, despite the changes and it remains a time of year most people look forward to sharing with loved ones, giving, receiving, eating and feasting, for some prayer and remembrance and others like good old Ebenezer Scrooge a time to renew hope, and turn another leaf.

Many of us are all ready thinking about Christmas Future, those things we hope we might be doing next year for Christmas, even while many of us are still enjoying Christmas Present but I think all of us have fond memories of Christmas Past.

So I thought I would make a thread for those who care to participate in the eternal magic of Christmas which to me has a lot more to do with comity and goodwill, family, friends and hope and love if you have a special Christmas Past story you would like to share.

I got to thinking about this last night when another member asked in the Secret Society Forum what Masons do to celebrate Christmas, and while I am not a Mason it did prompt me to write a cute story about the Mason Jars full of garden grown vegetables lovingly canned and then retrieved from an icy grotto built into the side of a hill on Christmas morning to join the annual feast.

That got me thinking about the other favorite moments of my own of Christmas Past, mainly the extended family gathering around an old Hammond Organ set beside the fireplace to sing Christmas Songs together and the joy of everyone you loved being present and doing something happily together, and the long after dinner walks through the snow to burn off some of the delicious dinners, to have a little more room at the end for some warm cocoa and some more delicious deserts.

I feel lucky in a way even though I am not religious because I know my own Children have never really known what some of us old members might describe as an Old Fashioned Christmas.

So I thought it might be fun to devote a thread today to Christmas Past for those sentimental members who might have a favorite story or moment from their own Ghosts of Christmas Past they would like to share one more time.

Merry Christmas!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Lots of things to love about Christmas, and this time of year.

I miss the big clunky bright lights of yesteryear.
Though I cant help but be bedazzled by the LED displays of Christmas today, they are amazing,
like the one in the video below!

Cheers!

For me Christmas past was when both my parents still were alive. Indeed ,singing x-mas songs around the piano (my dad played a mean bit of piano, from Bach to Bacharach...)
An x-mas tree with real roots and soil, smelling of the world outside. Making our own x-mas cards. Finding nice little presents by the tree. A little snowy village made from cardboard and cotton-wool snow under the tree.
No enormously expensive presents. Just some books, maybe a bit of x-mas specific candy thrown in (Frozen Rum-Alaskas in our case, made by our local bonbonnierre..Yes, there was a time people made sweets themselves, not too long ago in our farmer's community in the north)
X-mas dinner with veil-tongue in madeira-gravy, and cranberries -very important! still make myself cranberry sauce on the first day of x-mas-. Evening around the fire-place, just chatting, enjoying the fact that there are no pressing matters.

Grand-parents visiting on the 2nd x-mas day....more presents (always a boon, even for a "grown-up-feeling" 17-year old ) My grandma making dinner for the second day of x-mas (glorious breadpudding with Rum-custard topping..)

The smell of my grandfathers cigars. Roasting chestnuts in our fireplace. Amazing my, then, girlfriend, -city kid, met her in uni- that never had seen that done "for real" as she so eloquently stated..Chestnuts gathered in the fall. We had some huge, old chestnuts on our lands.

Superrr old-fashioned romantic, yet not even that long ago, talking the 90's here...*sigh* Always a bit shocking to experience how quickly things can change for the worse