Ghosts of Christmas Past

I have been under a great deal of stress for the past several weeks. We have recently switched over to a new computer system at work and there have been all sorts of problems and frustrations. As a result, I have been waking up early in the morning and finding myself unable to go back to sleep, problems from my job plaguing my mind.

I found myself awake at 4am the other morning and could not for the life of me go back to sleep. I kept going over and over in my mind about all of the many problems that I would have to deal with in just a few short hours. I only had about an hour and a half before I had to get up and around and desperately needed more sleep.

In the past I have practiced visualization techniques to help me to deal with stress and to rest. I decided to take conrol of the situation and not let my stress get the best of me. I imagined myself standing before a door adorned by a wreath with evergreen and holly. As I opened the door, I walked into a cozy room with a blazing fire and a Christmas tree with presents piled beneath. There was a nice armchair sitting before the fire and I decided to take a rest there. A little elf dressed in green and red handed me a steaming mug of hot coco and I began to wind down. As I sipped the coco, the little elf handed me a large book, thick with many pages. As I opened the book, I realized that this book contained all of the memories from every Christmas that I had ever had. Joy filled my soul as I was flooded with images, music and happy faces from the past.

I remembered Christmas as a child, how me and my brother and sister would be so excited on Christmas morning that we would get up before the crack of dawn and beg our parents to let us open our gifts. I remembered the Christmas plays and the carols we would sing at church. I smiled as visions of my first Christmas with Patti came to mind. We were poor, but we were happy together, just the two of us in our little cottage in Eureka.

I was taken back to visit familiar faces, long gone, but still alive in my memories.
I remembered one Christmas at Grandmother Robert's house, and all of the years where we went to see Grandmother and Gramps in Central City. I could still taste Grandmother's sweet potato casserole in orange cups. After visiting Gramps and Grandmother we would drive to Owensboro to visit Mamaw Boyd up in her apartment at the Roosevelt House. She didn't have much money, but she always fed us well and we would all sit around the living room telling stories.

I remembered the strange event one cold Christmas Eve as we left Owensboro and my sister Janet and I heard the distant sound of sleigh bells. We looked up in the sky and saw a strange sight, something neither of us could explain. I was a teenager, way past the age of believing in Santa Clause, yet that experience made me wonder...

As I turned the pages of the book I came to more recent years, Christmas with my own children. I remembered how excited they use to be and the twinkle in their eyes as they opened their gifts on Christmas morning. I remembered the many times we spent Christmas Eve at Mom and Dad's house in Pikeville, Ky. Mom would always have a big feast prepared and there would be gifts under the tree for everyone. Dad would read the Christmas story from the Bible and we would all sit around laughing and enjoying each other's company.

I remembered fondly my ferrets Scamp and Skittles. Skittles passed away on Thanksgiving Day 2008 and Scamp just a few months later in April 2009. Skittles would always climb under the tree and steal the ornaments. He would hide them and we would find them, sometimes months later, under the couch or the entertainment center.

I couldn't help but smile as all the happy memories flooded my mind. A feeling of peace drifted over me as I drifted back to sleep. Just a short time later I woke up, not quite so stressed and ready to face another day.

Last night we took the kids to Old Town Coffee & Chocolates for an evening of storytelling with the ghostly Carpathian and company. We sipped hot coco as we listened to ghost stories of Christmas and Hanukkah. There were silly songs and old carols played by Scatter the Mud, a local Celtic band. The room was very crowded and Patti and I had to stand the entire time, but we enjoyed ourselves.

As Carpathian reminded us, there weren't always TVs and computers to keep us entertained during the holidays. Telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve is a tradition that was very much alive in times past. The families would gather around the fireplace and enjoy each other's company, telling tales as they kept warm inside from the chill of winter outside.

Christmas is the season of Ghosts. I was visited by mine the other morning and feel blessed by all the happy memories that they brought to me.