Stave I – The Ghost of Christmas Past
I awoke with a sharp shock, the bell on the church tower not much further thus from our house peeling unusually. Not that the distinct ring of the bell was not of the habit I was used to, but, rather the timing was off. As I lay in the darkness listening for the tell-tale sign of the hour from which I had broken my slumber, the strangest arrival did forestall me. The bell did not ring for the hours between three and six, which would be my first thought due to the light, or lack thereof, which did not shine through the lace curtains. No dear reader, the bell did chime fourteen-and-a-half times, as if ice had frozen some part intrinsic to the fifteenth ring. Yet a bell which does ring fifteen or indeed fourteen-and-a-half times is curious, even through the fog of a restless sleep.
The timing quickly dispersed and, there, at the foot of my bed did stand an otherworldly figure, both shimmering and faint. It was a strange figure, like a child, a small child with wispy white hair, but not white hair as if fear had shocked the colour there within, more blonde. And curly, not wispy. Viewed through the supernatural haze of an hour not known to this or any other timepiece, it tweaked my curiosity and, yes, I do admit my fear. If not for a teddy bear I did recognise and a broken toy not dissimilar to a robot you read of in the science fiction journals of the day, I would surely have said it was a ghost and not my son Luca.
“Are you Luca?”
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long past?” I enquired, for Christmas does come but once a year but there has been as many as one thousand eight hundred and fifty six.
“No,” he did say. “Last year. Christmas 2019.”
It was here that I felt sure I was witnessing trickery of some unknown, spiritual kind, of which I had no prior experience or knowledge.
“Be gone.” I said.
“Rise,” he, or it, or whatever personal pronoun an eighteenth century ghost would take, said. “Walk with me.”
Rise? You are but not yet two I thought. And of the Christmas of 2019 thoust did not walk child, of this I was, and still am to this day, sure. But at the behest of the Ghost of Christmas Past I rose and followed to see what scenes he would unfold before my weary, sleepless eyes.
We passed through a wall and stood upon a country road. It is here in which I must leave the story of temporal moments and explain dear reader what it felt like to pass through a wall. Quantum tunnelling was spoken of fervently at the Royal Society of London. Those fellows under the tutelage of their fallen Newtonian idols had prophesized of particles passing through lead walls as if snowflakes passing through air. To pass full and all through the bedroom wall was akin to taking on the form of not one but the very apple which did prove gravity.
The Ghost of Christmas Past stumbled and fell on the cold road.
“Tis hard to walk,” he said. “I’m only two now and a year hence I was not yet one and here I am both there and here. We should go back inside. I want to show you last Christmas.”
And with a click of his fingers, if he had been in possession of such a trick not learned in earnest until the age of nine or ten, and even not always then, we did a science experiment fellows at the Royal Society would scarce believe. We traversed space and time and flickered back into an existence in front of the warm flames of a fire recently stoked.
It was a Christmas scene of the traditional fare, in so much as what is considered traditional for a tiny fraction of the race of humans. Not that that is to diminish tradition of one to another, or to belittle all problems as if they are not worth attention unless they are the problems which do frequent the gates of heaven or hell. A table of twenty, perhaps thirty of all ages stretched out before us. Luca, now at my side and eating an ice-cream nodded his small head towards the feast.
“This,” he said, unawares of the reactions of frozen chocolate when faced with the roaring flames of this or any other confrontation of oxygen and the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion. “This is Christmas 2019, perhaps the Christmas which you anticipated to unfold across the years of your family. You are not alone in that process of thought Daddy.”
Children not much older but less talented in the domains of string theory and quantum tunnelling than that of this Ghost of Christmas Past ran in ever decreasing circles around the table in a manner which could be termed naughty were it not Christmas where children are forgiven such over exuberance. Hugs and kisses and best wishes flowed from old to young, generation to generation as easily as the port and throne of mead which did water the political discourse and adult arguing which accompanies the tables of family Christmas regardless of the good intentions of Christmas Eve.
“Look,” I said, pointing at uncles and aunts, cousins and nieces, nephews and brothers and sisters one and all. “They wear not masks and talk only of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, not of coronal flares and corona peaks.”
“No,” said Luca, licking molten chocolate from the floor. “It was like this. It was always like this. The question which does speak from the lips of you is will it be like this once again?”
“Remove me,” I said to the Ghost of Christmas Past. “I have seen enough of this. Take me home.”
I was at this point greatly overcome with what can only be described as an all-encompassing fatigue, a bodily illusion of such great soporific power that I did both at once and from then on fall into a slumber I do not remember, and, of which, I cannot tell you dear reader much more than as if I was describing the darkness of a sleep only known to those who have returned from the dark-side of near death or the bottle self-administered anaesthetic. Suffice to say it was the sleep I have only experienced once before or since and one I will only know once more.
Stave II – The Ghost of Christmas Present
I have described dear reader the first of the visions, for I call them visions as without doing so I am left with but the only conclusion otherwise reached and one which I am too sound of mind to consider, even after ten months of social dissonance which does not prevent the complete removal of the beds of Bedlam. The second came the next night. A cold enveloped the town of London that December night the likes of which had not been felt since the frozen waters of the Thames held forth the markets of the golden age and families in their winter wares did skate and glide across the frozen waters of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Merton, Richmond and Wandsworth and the equally frozen waters of the lakes within the great parks of London.
I lay in bed wondering on the previous night, my breath visible to any there clear as the sky is to the birds. Apocalypse Mommy, unperturbed by both the cold – thanks to pyjamas – neither the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present and Future (for there is a Future, the third vision which did itself visit upon me on the third night and one I will duly unfold once the mysteries and reality of the cold night I hitherto did describe) due to a stronger resilience to the spirits than I.
Contemplating the wisdom of advice and how it is always those who were not of the predicament who seem at once to be most suited to the truest course of action, I was at once taken, quite as expected, by a transformation as had visited me one night prior.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said Alice. “You have never seen the likes of me before.”
“And never again, I hope,” I said in return. “I saw your brother last night, he showed me Christmas of last year.”
“Enough heathen, your words do not at once.”
“Hold your carriage and horses,” I said, bewitched by the unknown cheek of this, although older, equally bothersome spirit which did keep me from me sleep. “You may be here to present unto me silver linings but I am still your father.”
Holly, mistletoe, ivy, turkeys, geese, glad tiding, oysters, pies, meats, presents, chocolate logs and gallon bottles of Prosecco cascaded all around making up the very nature we are, as sentient beings, able to at once consciously question and accept. As quickly as the blessings of a traditional Christmas – once again as is traditional for so few of the Earth – they did at once crumble into binary, ones and zeros, bases of ten, radiating from the atoms of my visual field and then, click, gone. Nothing.
The Ghost of Christmas Present and I sat in a speeding automobile somewhere twenty five miles north of London, or at least that is what Alice told me for it was not the London I knew. The roads were empty. Nobody was driving home for Christmas.
A flash of light.
And we were outside a dark lit row of houses and shops. Boarded up and darkened windows stretched out, not a candle light shone in the grocers window, nor even, the candle makers. Great streets of wonder branched off in some and every direction, all dark and empty, as if the whole of this once Great Britain had, by one consent, put out their fires, closed their tills and taken leave of absence.
“Why do you show me this Christmas? There is a peculiar flavour to your magic. Is it a Stoic lesson you are trying to teach me?”
“I am four Daddy. Of what you speak I am unsure. No, this is Christmas present, if you choose to focus on it.”
“There is another Christmas present? I want to see that.”
“As you wish.”
Stave III – The Ghost of Christmas Future
The final spirit did, of course as you now know, flutter down into the glinting dawn as some kind of horrific bat. Shrouded in darkness and wearing garments of some other worldly being, it held out a hand.
I had not slept much that night. Alice, dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Present (for that now was the only conclusion a sound mind could make), had indeed, as promised, shown to mine eyes an alternative second version of the dark streets and vacant towns of Christmas present: one not so dissimilar to that of the first spirit who took me on the voyage through time to the Christmas of last year. Admittedly showing attributes one could quite easily accredit to a fairy tale, the Christmas I was shown was of smaller families and lesser feasts, of uncertain welcomes, stuttering hugs and kisses in hands thrown across tables and doorways. It was a Christmas of, yes, great uncertainty, perhaps of some esoteric dysfunction only the very high offices of power really understand, but for us, the unwashed, unheard, and unseen, it was the best of what you could have anticipated. Not that that would distract from that which could have been or, one is increasingly likely to hear, should have been, yet, one which is. Which was. There is some hidden wisdom to be found amongst the daydreams of today, antique knowledge we must heed and, if it so dictates, pass on to our, at once young but not so for long. For one day, will all awaken on a morning from which we will not see the next. So fuck it.
As is written in the great stoic meditations.
It does not matter what you bear, only how you bear it – Seneca
I had accepted my truth when the final spirit came, and was not open to their torrid tale.
“Be gone ghost of Christmas future,” I said, and, with a flick of my long cloak swished him aside, like nature posturing. “I am not interested in seeing your doom ridden future.”
The spirit paused, as if observing my condition, wondering on a response the ghoul did not foresee.
The whole future lies in uncertainty, live immediately – Seneca
I was motivated, by an inner power, which did upon me from locations unbeknownst to my festive spirit, to throw more stoic quotes at the Ghost of Christmas Future. Whether the spirit which visited the family that third night was indeed capable of predisposition to infinite futures which lay before us, is not known to this simple mind dear reader. Scarcely believed, though common amongst the scientists of the day, was the obtuse theory of a multi-verse; the removal of free will in as much as you can make a choice when every choice the universe has taken the liberties to already take. I do not wish to know the future, of this or any Christmas, or indeed, any day on the tramlines of fate, or not. For they will be filled with all of the human emotions, of all the great lows and highs of the condition which we call consciousness. For them to be sprung upon me on the midnight air by uninvited spirits was too much for my delicate disposition. A memory of the past, a vision of the present, that I can abide. But that is all.
I stood strong and told him so.
“I’m Apocalypse Daddy,”
They had cars big as bars they had rivers of gold.
And “I’m Apocalypse Mommy,” said the bride of mine for what, although is only seven years…
“Six.”
“What?”
“Six,” said Apocalypse Mommy, eating a Terry’s Chocolate Orange like a mince pie. “We’ve been married six years.”
“Have we? Is it only that long? I mean, wasn’t it 2013?”
“No.”
“How old are the kids?”
“One-and-a-half and four-and-a-half.”
“Shit. They have age inappropriate presents.”
“What the fuck is an age inappropriate present?”
“I read it.”
“Where?”
“In a book. It said you should buy gifts which the children will be able to understand.”
“You know those ages they put on children’s toys? They just make that up. They have massive ranges, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Apocalypse Mommy picked up at once a puzzle of a sweet looking, yet sadly quite naïve, princess.
“Look at this. This puzzle has fifty four pieces and is suitable for children from three to seven. Three to seven? Who makes this shit up? Three to seven? They change in a fucking day. How, in any universe, can a three-year old and a seven-year old possibly be put in the same box, let alone doing the same puzzles? Age appropriate presents? Fuck that shit.”
“Did someone buy you a swear box for Christmas. This is fucking Charles Dickens.”
The Ghost of Christmas Future, forgotten from our conversation on the ills of toys and inappropriate ages, had not vanished yet hovered, uncomfortably, above the ground.
“Shall I go?” It did at once say.
And we said yes. And it did vanish back to where it had come.
“What time is it?”
“It is but nearly eight in the morn.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“I thought this was a Christmas Carol?”
The children, perhaps sleepy and jaded from their late night exploits, had slept beyond their normal hours. That mirage did not have much more duration for as the very thought of a lie in and a moment of tranquillity did enter upon my thoughts than did Alice run, accompanied by her small brother, in formation through the open door.
Knocking the Christmas tree down, sending broken glass, upturned drinks and a thousand toys all at once across the room and descending a certain kind of chaos across the universe, they ran like the herds of bison across the great plains of the Serengeti, stomping everything as they simply followed the inner voices of their childlike brains over which they had, or at least we as parents believe, little self-control.
Luca, of the smallest and least developed, ran straight, leading with his head, into the window, mistaking the clarity of clean glass for the eternal transparency of air. He did at once cry, then stop. His sister laughed and flung open the windows with exuberant glee.
No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold, piping for the blood to dance to; golden sunlight; Heavenly sky, sweet fresh air, merry bells, oh glorious, oh glorious.
“What day is it,” Alice did scream, for scream is, was and will be, the only octave a child can use during the day of the traditions of Christmas.
“Thursday,” I said. “Christmas is tomorrow.”