Here’s that Spirit of Christmas Past I was telling you about.
At our Church Men’s group this week one of the fellows, a retired pastor, discussed a book he’d read about how Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol saved Christmas. It is a fine story. Claudia has made it a habit to watch several versions of the story every Christmas. This year so far she’s only watched it once with our grandsons. That was the Muppet version and our littlest one has taken quite a fancy to it especially with the two puppet ghosts of Marley.
Tonight as I was fussing with the pictures in the last post Marley appeared dragging his heavy chains. He was followed by the Spirits of future and past Christmases and Bob Cratchit carrying Tiny Tim a little recklessly on his shoulder.
Through the years I’ve always been struck by stories about redemption and warnings from beyond. One of my favorite movies is Groundhog day although there are no ghosts in it. I have often sung Ghost Riders in the Sky to my Mother in which the cowboys chasing the Devil’s herd endlessly across the sky could be spurred stand-ins for Marley.
You might recall that on the day of my Mother’s death my little spirit of Christmas past got recast at the last minute as the snowman, Olaf, in his preschool’s Holiday extravaganza. He’s still at his theatrical best having acted out the better half of the Carol today. That was after we took him to help us cut down a Christmas tree. I’ll post a picture of that tomorrow.
