Emma Kathryn Wild Witchcraft

I’m all over Christmas ghost stories and folklore at the moment, tis the season and all that jazz! So here is my own very short offering in that vein, a retelling of Santa, but as an ancestor (and the more I think about it, perhaps he is, an ancestor to us all). What is remembered lives on! Merry Christmas everyone!

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The memory moves throughout the year. It isn’t a static thing, but is instead carried in the minds of people, held in the collective consciousness, even if sometimes it’s only on the very edges. What do you expect? People are fickle, creatures easily led, swaying from one thing to the next, their small minds filling quickly and emptying just as fast. But still, it lurks there beneath it all, just waiting to be let out. Or rather, let in.

Sometimes the memory thins, when the new growth in the garden and gentle blossoms herald spring, replete with the promise of milder weather and longer days. When summer rolls around it all but disappears, instead becoming hazy, as fine as the gossamer threads of a spider’s web, only hinted at as it catches the light at just the right angle, all iridescence shimmers and sparkles, but for less than a moment. Blink and it’s gone, those tiny, almost hive minds drunk on the heat of the summer sun and dreams of golden sand in faraway lands, even if they stay just that, dreams.

But even then, something tugs at the corner, dark and cold, like a corpse cold hand holding on, begging to be remembered, for what is remembered lives. It doesn’t want to be forgotten. It’s only when the seemingly endless cycle of seasons moves to autumn and the dark half of the year that it’s let in, as though the collective mind sighs out in relief, no more hiding, no more pretending.

Past Samhain and Halloween, and into the deep and dead of midwinter. In this darkness it moves, creeping silently at first. It changes too, like a flickering film or a rolling shadow puppet screen. First just a young man, sometimes helping and sometimes punishing, sometimes older dressed in golds and reds, the colours of saints. Young. At other times dressed in robes of green with sprigs of holly adorning long curling locks, other times red and white, a  jolly old man. All but masks, both real and other, but always with monsters, all tooth and claw, creeping behind, his own wild hunt to punish and harm those who do not meet the measure.

And now as the time creeps closer, it dons its cloak of red, cocking its head to one side. Ah yes, the gentle ringing of bells, a sign his silent steeds are near. Not quite a death knell, but one that summons the spirit to flight. It’s time for this particular wild hunt to take to the skies, rewarding those who have remembered, who leave offerings of milk or even brandy, something to eat perhaps.

This night is his, a time to be remembered and honoured, Christmas eve. Gifts and joy to those who do, but to those who do not, well, who knows what monsters might lurk in the depths of midwinter.