Heartwarming Holiday Tales by R.W. Wallace

Author:R.W. Wallace [Wallace, R.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Varden Publishing
Published: 2022-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Severed Ties

Christmas is a weird time of the year. It can be the most wonderful and heartwarming days of a person’s life, just like it can be the absolute worst. There’s no in-between. I think the comparison with the perfect days is the reason the bad ones become so bad.

Being ghosts in a cemetery doesn’t really change the phenomenon. Except maybe tip the scales away from the cheer and joy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We’re not miserable ghosts by any stretch of the imagination. No moaning, very little spooking visitors, no screaming vengeance at the moon. Clothilde tried that last one at one point in the late nineties but couldn’t stay serious for long enough to pull it off.

Clothilde and I have celebrated Christmas together more times than either of us did with our respective families when we were alive, and we’ve developed our own traditions. A couple of times they were adapted because we had a visiting ghost who hadn’t resolved their unfinished business yet, but mostly, it’s stayed the same through the years.

It starts with the decoration of the church and the manger. We’re lucky enough to live in a cemetery belonging to a church where they put the manger outside. If it was on the inside, we could never have seen it. We’re stuck on the outside.

There’s a sort of shed a little off to the left of the main entrance. I think it might have been intended as a place to park bikes, by someone who didn’t realize very few people ride their bike to church. So it has become the setting for a life-sized manger.

The first time they set it up was our second Christmas here. We were both feeling rather blue, missing our families and not yet come to terms with our status as ghosts, and the fuss of setting everything up and working out the kinks turned out to be exactly the kind of distraction we needed.

Joseph and Maria have been here since that first year, obviously, as has the baby Jesus, one sheep, and one of the wise men. I’ve never been quite clear on which wise man is which—and neither have the people setting it up because the same mannequin never brings the same gift or wears the same clothes two years in a row—but there wasn’t enough money to bring them all the first year. The two colleagues showed up three years later, bringing lots of pretty and sparkling gifts.

Better late than never.

I say Jesus has been here from the start, but the one currently waiting to make his grand entrance on Christmas Eve is actually the fifteenth doll playing the part. It’s worrisome how popular it is to steal the baby Jesus. I don’t think I want to know what happens to them once they leave sacred ground.

The animals have also slowly trickled in over the years. One sheep became five, soon joined by a donkey and a cow. We only have the head of the cow because making

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.