We don’t like to think about death too much at Christmas these days, especially when it comes to children’s stories. This is a shame, because dwelling on the proximity of darkness has been a significant part of our collective storytelling tradition at this time of year, since long before the Green Knight crashed King Arthur’s Christmas feast.
The Christmas ghost story used to be a family occasion; Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black both begin with the telling of fearful tales around the fire on Christmas Eve, a reminder that as we gather with loved ones around the warmth and lights of the hearth, the dark and the wild are still outside the windows, remnants of our pagan past – frightening and far from cosy.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2La0TDp
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