![\"1913-xmas-past\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/615\/2016\/12\/1913-xmas-past.jpg\")
<\/a>It\u2019s that time of year when I don\u2019t know who to be more frustrated with: those who reduce\u00a0Christmas to commercialism and saccharine songs, or those who allegedly want to put the Christ back in Christmas \u2013 by which they usually mean their favorite\u00a0idol. If I were feeling uncharitable, I might make some sort of comment about it being impossible to put the Christ back in Christmas without putting the Mass back in Christmas, as it\u2019s hard to understand Christ apart from the work of\u00a0 the Church. Without Christ and His Church we\u2019re\u00a0left only with a vague feeling that we should have warm hearts and special generosity around this time because \u2013 well, because it\u2019s Christmas.<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps the most positive way we can put this is that the season is a mystery in the cultic sense \u2013 we don\u2019t really know why or what we are doing when we celebrate Christmas, but we do it anyway because something in the mystery draws us. Like Bryan Adams, we simply feel there\u2019s \u201csomething about Christmas time.\u201d But because of the difficulty of sustaining a mystery religion in a modern, \u201cprogressive\u201d world, we find ourselves longing for the infantile innocence of stupidity, which we excuse by mislabeling it \u201cchildlike.\u201d You must only\u00a0believe.\u00a0<\/em>But believe in what?<\/p>\n When we are urged to return to the\u00a0\u201ctrue meaning\u201d of Christmas\u2013whether understood as the Christian\u00a0nativity story, a particular sobriety, the ousting of mammon, or the abolition of Santa Claus and other Christmas mythopoeia\u2013I\u2019m left astounded by the certainty\u00a0with which those doing the urging seem to know the \u201ctrue meaning\u201d of Christmas. Really? Is it so simple to grasp the fact of God taking flesh, becoming human and also remaining God? Have we really got a handle on this such that we can go about correcting the imaginations of our friends and relatives?<\/p>\n As you can see, neither secularism nor a dead-certain faith\u2013emphasis on \u201cdead\u201d\u2013satisfies me. So where can I find the answer?<\/p>\n In ghosts.<\/p>\n I\u2019m serious. I think we should heed Dickens and the spooky stories of twelfth night because they get at something about Christ\u2019s incarnation that neither the secular sops nor the hard-nosed Christian killjoys understand: the spirit of Christmas is the uncanny.<\/p>\n Let me explain.<\/p>\n In literary theory, when we talk about \u201cthe uncanny,\u201d we are not talking about simple concrete gruesome horror, nor are we talking about something that cannot ever be known. We\u2019re talking, in simplest terms, about mystery. The uncanny disappears when certainty appears on either side, that is, when the ghost we are afraid of is debunked, or when it is put to rest within a solid and comprehensive metaphysics.<\/p>\n In some Christmas traditions, this uncanniness is negative, as in the case of the poem \u201cOld Christmas Morning,\u201d<\/a> but in Dickens, the uncanny ghosts exist halfway between the worlds of marvel and terror, and the uncanniness of time \u2013 that is, the ungraspability \u2013 is shown in the persons of present, past, and future.<\/p>\n What I want to suggest is that, far from being a distraction from the \u201ctrue meaning\u201d of Christmas, this tradition of uncanniness points us right back to the central Christmas story \u2013 the uncanniness of Christ\u2019s incarnation. \u201cIt\u2019s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year\u201d speaks more truth than ought to be allowed such a schmaltzy song when it speaks of \u201cscary ghost stories and tales of the glories.\u201d What ghosts are to our perception in a negative sense, the incarnation of Christ \u2013 inspired after all by a Holy Ghost \u2013 is in a positive sense. And we know this from the Gospel According to John.<\/p>\n It\u2019s in John\u00a0that we get the fullest account of Christ\u2019s birth<\/a>, though it\u2019s not the gospel we usually associate with the Christmas story, given its omission of historical details. Yet there is a strong case to be made that John does in fact recount the Christmas story in the opening of his book \u2013 the difference is that he is recounting it from a metaphysical rather than merely human perspective. John, the eagle, looks into the sun of righteousness, and is dazzled. To say John points to the \u201ctrue meaning of Christmas\u201d here would be moot; rather, the logos has a hold of him and won\u2019t let go.<\/p>\n If this \u2013 what John is describing \u2013 can happen, then anything might happen.<\/p>\n And this is explains the uncanny stories that crop up at Christmas. In such a world, challenged as it is by the incarnation of God, men might come back from the dead. Flowers might bloom in the bleak of winter. Sinners might even learn to repent.<\/p>\n Aside from the more frightening instances of uncanniness, this also explains much of the needless frivolity, absurdity, and silliness of Christmas \u2013 all perfectly justifiable on Christian grounds. In a world in which God can become incarnate, even the most foolish things have potential to be folly for God. We do absurd things like sing songs of hope in the middle of a blizzard, or gather together with the people we argue with the most \u2013 our family \u2013 and talk about peace on earth, good will toward men. Indeed, this overturning \u2013 this incarnation \u2013 may be enough\u00a0to redeem the most unredeemable of things. Even kitsch and schmaltz and jest might lay their gifts at the manger. This comes to pass when a child is born.<\/p>\n When Christians seek to have a stranglehold on the \u201ctrue meaning of Christmas,\u201d they often miss the fact that its truest meaning is dazzling mystery, a mystery patient enough to wait out any clumsy attempts to wield it like a club. Seculars and pagans alike sense that mystery \u2013 but with nothing to\u00a0point to,\u00a0our festivities collapse into sentimentalism or despair. It\u2019s with this\u00a0in mind that I want to wish you all a (Christ) haunted Christmas.<\/p>\n The description is Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s, who once said that if the south of the United States was hardly Christ centered, it was certainly Christ-haunted. The same could be said of Christmas. The season is saturated with Christian imagery, palimpsests, and erasures. Yet simply trying to go back to the \u201cgood old days\u201d when people knew what Christmas was about is not the answer; nor is the answer steamrolling current society so we can rebuild a Christmas worthy of Christendom.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s\u00a0return, instead, to the mystery of incarnation, a mystery so powerful it\u00a0sustains all this imagination and beauty, from the highest to the\u00a0silliest.\u00a0Let\u2019s follow O\u2019Connor to the realization that even a chaos and confusion of symbols and theologies \u2013 a thoroughly haunted labyrinth \u2013 is no great obstacle to a God who calls order out of chaos and enters that order, both in the flesh, and as the Ghost Who haunts us.<\/p>\n Karl Persson<\/strong> is a scholar of premodern literature and theology, and is a professor in the Literature and Language Departments at Signum University.<\/a>\u00a0In his spare time, he enjoys creative and freelance writing, and is a regular contributor to the Patheos Catholic Channel\u2019s Inner Room, a blog focused on contemplative spirituality and the recovery of ancient Christian practices and social imaginaries.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n More on Christmas ghost stories:<\/p>\n A look\u00a0at the historical origins of Victorian England\u2019s Christmas ghost stories, and how they expressed the beliefs and anxieties of the age. Also\u2013liminality.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Five Forgotten Christmas Ghost Stories from Paris Review<\/a><\/p>\n Christmas Ghost Stories from Gothic Curiosities<\/a><\/p>\n