Making impressions

I have been trying to discover more about the association of ghost stories with Christmas (particularly Christmas eve) in Britain. I have read more than once that Charles Dickens was responsible for this but I am not convinced; I think there is enough evidence to suggest that other things have helped to add a ghostly element.

It was Pope Julius 1 in the 4th century who set the 25th of December as marking the birth of Christ. Why it was chosen has been argued back and forth by many scholars, but it is accepted that the festivals of other religions and cultures (Jewish and Pagan) which were also celebrated around this date influenced the choice and the traditions. It was because of these non Christian connections that the Puritans tried to suppress Christmas in the mid-17th century(as well as being kill-joys, of course).

So where do the ghosts come in? At first I thought I was looking at a simple tradition of ghost story telling: between Hallowe’en and Christmas are dark days; the natural world hibernates and the weather is inclement [for something sensible on Samhain see http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/faqs/samain.html]. What would be more natural than to huddle around a fire and tell stories for entertainment – including ghost stories? The ghost story at Christmas is an oral tradition which Dickens drew upon when he published his stories (people were not shocked by their arrival and he writes himself: ‘I like to come home at Christmas…for we are telling Winter Stories – Ghost Stories,…around the Christmas fire’). M. R. James read his stories aloud to friends on Christmas Eve and the BBC continues to entertain us with ghostly stories on radio and television.

However, there may be something more here which links the dark days at the end of the farming calendar to the other world. Christmas itself is a borrowed feast in many ways, it is no accident that it falls on the date of what was in the Julian calendar the winter solstice. In Imperial Rome this date was a celebration of Sol Invictus - ‘the unconquered sun’. It is the ‘rebirth’ of the sun after reaching its furthest distance away it begins the long journey north again. Christmas and the other festivals in one form or another mark the winter solstice, for people living in the northern hemisphere this is a time of minimal daylight with considerable physical and psychological effect; for pre modern man it was a difficult and harsh time of the year.

In the mid winter celebrations of other cultures, some at least of which have contributed to our Christmas traditions, there are many references to the dead or to ghosts. (For a very long list of winter solstice feasts see Wikipedia.)

From the 17th to the 24th December the Romans celebrated Saturnalia, the feast of the god Saturn and essentially a harvest festival, but it has influenced our Christmas celebrations. It was a time when the normal social rules were turned upside down (the master served his slaves during the feast – also found later in medieval Christmasses) and people took on fancy or opposite dress, there was gift giving and feasting and a lot of merry making (people calling ‘Io Saturnlia!’ to each other), and mischief making. Two days of the latter part of the festival celebrated the Laeres. These were part of the canon of household gods in traditional Roman religion, they were spirits of the ancestors of the household. Good spirits, but very definitely they were the spirits of the dead.

The Greek equivalent was called the Kronia (Kronos and Saturn were identified with each other). In folklore malevolent goblins called Kallikantzaroi appeared from below ground from the 25th December to 6th January. It was believed that children born during the festival were in danger of turning into Kallikantzaroi. Interestingly, in Greek mythology the Gods gathered on Mount Olympus at the winter solstice and were joined by Hades, from the underworld of the dead.

In Germany and Scandinavia, there was the Yule festival that was marked by bonfires, story telling and feasting. This was an amalgamation of a number of other mid winter festivals including one called the Feast of the Dead.

Most strikingly there was a Slavic mid winter festival called Karachun, Korochun or Kračún and Khorovod in Russia and the Ukraine. It was celebrated on the longest night of the year when something called the Black God and other evil spirits were most potent. Hors (symbolising the dying sun) is defeated by the dark and evil powers of the Black God on that day. Hors is then resurrected on December 23rd and becomes the new sun. On this day, they burned fires at cemeteries to warm the spirits of the departed, invited the dead to the dinner feast and lit wooden logs at local crossroads. The household gods could join with the family in the festivities at the hearth. (The name of this festival looks like it might be related to the ancient Greek ‘Kronia’; the name of the god Hor looks like it might be borrowed from the Egyptian god ‘Horos’ who, by classical times was a sun god and the reference to household gods sounds Roman.)

The winter festival on December 21st in ancient Latvia was called Ziemassvētki, and was preceded two weeks before by ‘Veļu laiks’, the ‘Season of Ghosts’. During the Ziemassvētki feast, a space at the table was reserved for Ghosts, who would arrive on a sleigh (Ho Ho Ho!).

Archaeological monuments particularly in northern Europe have demonstrated that the mid winter solstice was significant far back in antiquity for which there are no written records. There are many examples, including tombs that are aligned with the solstice. Stonehenge has a solsticial alignment (both mid winter and mid summer) but it is likely the more significant of these was the mid winter. Newgrange is a large passage tomb in the Boyne Valley in Ireland. Built around 3300 BC it has a very special alignment with the mid winter sun. Above the entrance in the north east is a ‘roof box’ (window) in which the sun appears after it rises on the winter solstice, its rays reach right to the back of the chamber where the dead would have been.

Dowth, another chambered tomb in the same group, is aligned with the setting sun. The entrance of Maes Howe in Orkney is also aligned with the mid winter sunset. Do these ancient monuments point to a belief where there is a link between the dead and the solstice? Did the sun wake them or set them in their tombs? We will never really know what they believed. Although it is a tomb, that may not have been its only purpose, for us the monument itself is the attractor and back in time the symbolism of the building may have been just as important or more so, it could have been seen as the entrance to another world. Michael O’Kelly the archaeologist that excavated Newgrange and who discovered the phenomena is reported as saying ‘I expected to hear a voice, or perhaps feel a cold hand resting on my shoulder, but there was silence. And then, after a few minutes, the shaft of light narrowed as the sun appeared to pass westward across the slit, and total darkness came once more.’ (See http://www.knowth.com/new_grange.htm) Today people gather inside Newgrange on the morning of the solstice to watch the spectacle of the sun reaching down to the chamber. In prehistory, the entrance to the tomb was sealed and the only witnesses to the solstice would have been the dead. The position of the sun at the solstice remains about the same for around a fortnight of the actual longest day so the special alignment can be seen at Stonehenge and other monuments on more than one night - at Newgrange a quartz stone shutter had been used in antiquity on the ‘roof box’ to control the penetration of the suns rays into the tomb.

The mid winter then seems to be full of ghosts, the ancestors and less savoury figures. Is it really surprising at the darkest time of the year that this should be on peoples minds? The ghosts of our Christmas Eve are a reflection or a memory of old fears, remembrance of the departed and very old traditions.

Ghosts, the dead, darkness are but one side of the equation. Light and life are the other: bonfires and the yule log were burned in northern Europe and evergreen plants symbolised life. It was a fitting choice for the Christian celebration. The winter solstice is often a major festival – marking the change in day length and the hope of spring. The dying of the sun and its revival, the winter and darkness become symbols of life and death. Many mid winter festivals also mark this time as the new year – as we do.

I hope this rambling will enrich your celebrations, whether Christmas or otherwise. When you unravel your Christmas tree lights and reach for the collection of M. R. James stories, you can wonder at the strange and very long history of the mid winter feast. I hope you will lucky enough to hear a ghost story this year!

I am pleased to add four new designs to the Christmas cards for 2009. These are based on the ghost stories written by Charles Dickens.

Although I had read A Christmas Carol many years ago and had watched The Signalman on the BBC at Christmas I didn’t really know much about the other ghost stories of Charles Dickens other than he published several at Christmas in his own literary magazines - these were always most popular when they included a ghost story.

Apparently he loved a ghost story and owed this fascination for the supernatural to his nurse Mary Weller who terrified him with many tales. I was struck when reading a collection of his supernatural stories how many were in fact concerned with premonition and portent (To Be Read at Dusk, The Signalman), sometimes including ‘crisis ghosts’ - the appearance of those recently or about to die (Christmas Ghosts). The ghosts were sometimes concerned with vengence or seeing that justice is done (The Trial for Murder).

His work included a range of styles, some reminded me of traditional folk ghost tales with elements of melodrama (Captain Murder and the Devil’s Bargain), gruesome.

Dickens was one of a number of indiviuals who we have to thank for giving us the sort of traditions we now always associate with Christmas. Apparently in industrial Britain Christmas was under threat and many traditions such as carol singing were dying out. A number of Victorians made efforts to revive and promote Christmas as a holiday. Dickens is also credited with giving us the idea that Christmas should include snow - it is normally rare but he grew up during a minor climatic event that gave regular snowy Decembers. (Mind you, I have also heard this put down to the old Julian calendar slipping so that Christmas was actually ‘in January’ by the mid 17th Century.) He is also credited with inventing the Christmas Ghost Story - but I’m not convinced that he created it, rather he revived an older tradition.

Producing the designs was not always that easy, A Christmas Carol has been illustrated several times and created on screen in film and television and was familiar enough, but Dickens doesn’t often describe his spectres in any great detail or the scene at the moment of terror, as M.R. James. When we do get a real ghost, it is quite a traditional figure often comfortable to chat with the main character. Although Dickens does draw the occasional spine tingling moment, more often the real terror is with the stories relating to portent.

I produced 2 images from A Christmas Carol - of some of the more frightening scenes. The very first ghostly occurence is when Scrooge arrives home and his door knocker … well, it is a creepy moment. The Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come is the most sinister figure in his Reaper type appearance - which is justified when he reveals the inevitable future to Scrooge in the grave yard. The other image is taken from The Signalman which is one of the best ghost stories. I collected a few of the apparitions together with the author - including the ghost from the ‘Queer Chair’ for the last picture.

I have wanted to bring new drawings into the range for some time but other commitments have delayed that happening. Now I am pleased to say I am working on a number of new images which I hope you will like and they wont just be new Christmas designs either.

I am very fond of the skeleton character in the ‘Bones of Nunhead’, skeletons seem rather different figures from spectres. They seem to have an ambivalence about them, not normally malevolent but rather mischevious and uncaring. I’ve had a couple of ideas I wanted to try for some time and it looks likely there will be two skeleton designs.

I hope there will also be a couple of ghosts too, one peering round doors and catching you unawares. Another could show a ghostly figure creeping up the stairs - the inspiration for this, I am afraid to say was a nightmare I once had: a figure with a coat over it’s head was slowly moving up the stairs whilst I hid in a room off the landing. The reaction to the sketch I created was an instant “that’s scary” so it looks like I may have captured some of the absolute terror I felt during the dream!

I was fascinated by scarecrows when I was young, as most children are, with their rather sinsiter potential to ‘come alive’, at least in my imagination. A friend who knew I enjoyed spooky stories insisted that I look at the work of Robert Westall, as his writing included ghost stories for children. I was passed a copy of ‘The Scarecrows’ and suddenly I didn’t see them as funny or weird figures any more but something much more terrifying. The idea of a scarecrow that could scare more than birds seemed a good image to include.

Finally I hope this Christmas I will have another M. R. James story to add plus scenes from other well known authors who have written ghost stories, especially for Christmas enjoyment.

I’ll post the results as soon as they are finished.

I’m very glad to say the blog is back, but it doesn’t have all the functionality it’s supposed to, so I ask you to bear with me until it is fixed.

I had a great time at the Fortean Times Unconvention 2008. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the papers but it was nice to speak to people directly and find out what you think about the cards. We were quite busy and I will return next year as long as they don’t shift it to another season, even though this year attendance was down, as were the number of stalls. I took a helper on both days, so I am very grateful to my niece and nephew for coming along. My niece brought her hand made fridge magnets and clip on ‘Skulls’, which went down very well indeed.

A few people said that some images reminded them of pictures they had seen, or the style was reminiscent of another artist. I hadn’t seen any of the pieces they referred to or heard of the artist, although I pick up ideas and motifs like everyone else, without noticing. Sometimes a person would buy a few cards and then hurry off to their friends, start pointing at one and talk excitedly with their friends about it, as if it had some resonance for them.

A few people made enquiries about reproducing the images, I look forward to hearing from them. I was also asked about producing prints and I am happy to do so. I will formerly set up a way of buying direct after I have worked out the options but please contact me if you are interested. All in all it was a positive experience.

I am very grateful to my niece who is going to run a stall for me in Camden market. I hope she does well; she is also selling her own line of spooky knick-knacks and t-shirts.

Last week all the new Christmas ghost designs were finally sent to the printers and are available from today. There are two new designs similar to last year’s cards and four images based on the writings of M.R. James. It’s been quite an interesting journey and far less straight forward than I would have liked, but I hope you like what’s been produced. As regards the Jamesian cards I have tried to be faithful to the original stories but have used a little artistic license occasionally, I think the images have not strayed too far from those created in the writing.

From top left to bottom right Oh Whistle and I’ll come to you, a portrait of M.R. James plus phantoms, A Warning to the Curious and the Rats.

The two other images were made to compliment the original set of four cards and I hope you find them pleasing.

Finally many thanks to those of you who have supported me in this strange endeavour, I have enjoyed creating these spectres but it would be impossible to do without your encouragement. I think I will try to incorporate more designs from writers of the supernatural every Christmas, I have already had requests for Sheridan Le Fanu and of course there is Dickens too.

I hope you like this years offerings, perhaps I will see you at this years Fortean Unconvention.