Ghosts of Christmas Present

The positive absence of Christ.

From the title of this poem, a connection is made right a way to Dicken’s A Christmas Carol – in particular, its exuberant Ghost of Christmas Present. This image serves as a powerful contrast to the cheerless mood of the narrator, who is having trouble rising to the expectations of the holiday season. In many such Decembers, I have experienced the difficulty of identification with the need and pain of the world to a degree that makes me numb to the happiness of Christmas.

Not only numb, but Scrooge-like in cynicism about whether needy souls can really expect love and help from God. I seem to see the jolly ‘spirit of Christmas’ through the eyes of those who despair of God’s help. Surely this is my own temptation to despair – to denigrate my own blessings because everyone can’t have them; to let joy jar against my stern appraisal of ‘reality’; to insist that life is a tragedy and refuse it laughter.

But this Ghost, while I wax tragic and ‘realistic,’ is irrepressibly joyous – He will ring and laugh and shout (that ‘will’ is a nod to Gerard Manly Hopkins’ glimpse of glory through everyday things: “It will shine out, like shining from shook foil,” in his poem God’s Grandeur). He is as completely caught up in his ‘fantasy,’ or ‘dream’ as a Christian is in the story of the Incarnation.

How can love (see how the corner turned, and the Ghost of Presence – the Spirit of God – is really the person who concerns me?) be so joyous in the midst of so much pain and suffering? “How can I?” is the real question.

I resist walking through that door to Him (recall Dickens’ ghost calling, “Come in man, and know me better!” from a room piled with food and gifts). I resist the Spirit who woos and romances my soul. I don’t want to be swept off my feet. His enormous exuberance scares me and I cling to the familiar ‘reality’.

The whole year is ‘Christ-strewn,’ simply littered with His Presence, but at Christmas the contrast is greatest between the dark and the light, and my struggle is to reconcile that tension. Wherever there is tension, there is the possibility of new form – a creative response. I emerge from this struggle in the last stanza – no longer identifying with mere emptiness, but having offered it to Him, am now a vessel for His response to the needs around me.

In a sense, each Christmas takes me through a type of ‘dark night of the soul,’ and returns me to hope. I can witness the harsh realities of the world, but must release them to God for real prayer to occur. I can bear the ‘positive absence’ of Christ because He lives in me. His response – a word, or seed that corresponds to the reality I encounter – opens within me as hope, and then becomes real Christmas joy.

Ghosts of Christmas Present

With the Ghost of Christmas Present,

I look down upon the scenes

of the season’s robust temper –

I cannot, by any means,

enter in to the affliction

of the constant, boundless cheer

that runs rampant through all hearts but mine

at close of every year.

In the tension between bounty

and stark want on every side,

I pass, wraithlike, and invisible,

through jolly Christmastide.

While others of more substance gain

by Yule traditions filled,

through me the holy duties drain,

I slowly sink downhill.

Brought low, I find the lowlier still,

bereft, benumbed, we shades,

drawn to an unrequited love

all haunt the holidays.

If only one could misbelieve the grim realities

and suspend judgment for a while,

preferring fantasies,

then ghosts might grow alive and warm,

present in presence bright,

and with more than resignation

turn toward the holy night.

As it is, the one companion I perceive is this great ghost,

whose enormity and welcome jar and jangle with a host

of my sterner sensibilities –

he will ring and laugh and shout

though a multitude of piteous souls

waft hopelessly about.

He cares nothing, it would seem,

for the ones like me, who wait.

He lives only for his dream,

leaving us at heaven’s gate.

Is it possible that love should be so heartless and so cruel,

as to gloat of joys’ excesses while poverty still rules?
I would rather make my camp with the undead and the poor

than accept his invitation to walk through his open door;

to trod the boards in dutiful adherence to my part

than be romanced by a boisterous spirit playing on my heart.

I struggle with the ghost of presence every Christ-strewn year

then its memory fades as light dawns and my true form reappears.

If some give songs and gifts and gladness to the infant king,

the coffers of the magi for his sake replenishing,

my spectral contribution to the depths of his largesse

is perhaps the mere donation of my own soul’s emptiness.

As witness, I endure it all -

the longing, pain, and need -

from the absence sprouts a faint hope

corresponding to this seed.