Christmas 2017

How Sweet It Is

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The

Christmas Morning I woke up to snow, the Mumps and a brand new lime green bike with daisies stamped on the frame and a gear shift

the Christmas Eve Dinner when I tried Bourbon Balls for the first time and fed the half chewed remains to my cousin’s champion Saint Bernard Show Dog

All of the Christmas Nights that were cold and dark and full wandering pale winter  ghosts, warm rich food and soft lights burning from our over decorated tree

racing out the frosted windows into midnight

to find

and bring back

the next

perfect

Christmas.

 

Christmas Special (2017) Writing Prompt #12 – Perfect Christmas

Holiday Chocolates, A Ghost and a Mirror

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Photo A.M Moscoso

Last month I learned this great ghost story- it involved a chocolate shop, a mirror and a ghost with missing fingers.

The night I learned the story, it was chilly and it was just starting to rain and better yet the shop was closed at the time, so we were all lined up at the window peering into the darkness  towards the back of the shop where the mirror is.

I had my face right up against the glass- of course- and I was thinking to myself:

” I can’t wait to come back in the morning and buy a bunch of chocolates to take home with me.”

Here’s the funny party- I don’t like chocolate. Not even a little. I like milk chocolate and white chocolate ( yes, yes, yes, I KNOW white chocolate is not ‘real’ chocolate ) but as far as the traditional, dark, rich chocolate.

Ugh- I am not a fan.

But I had a plan.

A delicious one.

So the next day I went back and bought a big box of chocolates- and they weren’t little bite sized candies- they were generous sized pieces of chocolate with delicious creamy fillings. I went vampire on a few and drained the filling out, so I can vouch for the heaven that was hiding there in the darkness.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

I had my family over for Thanksgiving- and just before pie I pulled out a candy dish stacked with the chocolates

Just after the unwrapping and the moment my family began to sink their teeth into the chocolates I told them the story about the Haunted Candy Store and the ghost with the missing fingers.

They looked at the candy, they looked at me and back at the candy again.

They could have rolled their eyes around and thanked me for ruining the moment- but my family loves a good ghost story and I have been known for bringing up unsavory topics involving graveyards and missing body parts at dinners before so for the most part my story about buying candy from a haunted candy store wasn’t exactly earth shattering.

So.

They chewed, they were in heaven, I was in heaven.

We are all in heaven but for different reasons, as you can guess.

At the end of the evening though- when I was encouraging people to take some of the candy home ( I kid you not- those are BIG pieces of candy. Two people can share one piece and call it good ) I noticed some of us were calling the chocolates ” Ghost Candy.”

Next time I go back to Rogers I might snap a picture of the mirror- and maybe if I’m lucky, there will be a little handprint on it.

Maybe next time I’ll  ask if they have Lady Fingers.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Daily Post Prompt: Jolly

Shadows of Christmas Past

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Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

 

In My Bones

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I’m going to confess something here.

One would think that I would gorge myself on spooky movies and books and music during the month of October.

But I don’t- I do a lot of writing and I actually get into my photography more and I do decorate but for the most part I indulge in ghost stories in all the formats that the modern world offers and my writing even takes on a darker edge during the Christmas Season.

It may have something to do with the fact that when my family gets together we used to end up telling ghost stories, or weird stories about the human oddities we all seemed to run into during the Spring and Summer.

I heard my first stories about demonic possession at a Christmas Party when I was about 8 years old and when I got back to school after Christmas break I went straight to the school library and got my hands on every single book that featured ghosts or anything scary.

And after I ran through those I started to write my own.

So in my world the Christmas Season- joyful as it is- is full of shadows and basements and attics and graveyards covered with snow and it’s haunted by people who will never come home again.

See what I mean?

So here are three of my favorite Holiday Movies that do a lot to put me in the Christmas – spirit:

One of the best Ghost Stories ever-  I think it’s a great movie to watch at Halloween to-

Dicken’s ” Scrooge ”

When I was a child and first saw that graveyard scene I nearly ran screaming for the safety of my room. It was the first and only time a movie ever terrified me. Needless to say, I was charmed by it.

So this movie has a place in my heart- and nightmares forever.

This is a recent favorite- it’s all about family and the train wreck that can happen when we fail to navigate our way through the world together. Plus it has Vampires and Werewolves so it’s awesome:

” What  We Do In The Shadows.”

On Christmas Eve I like to read ” The Raven ” Sometimes I even try to recite it from memory- which amuses my cats and dog to no end because they are my audience.

If I could have done it like this I’d perform it at every single holiday function I go to. As it is, I just pull up the clip and watch the Simpsons telling of  ” The Raven ”

It’s a classic.

It may be odd, it might not make a lot of sense and I’m sure there is something not quite normal about it, but when I watch my movies and I sit back and turn them over in my mind- and if it’s cold or dark or it’s snowing –

it feels like Christmas to me-I can feel it in my bones.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Christmas Special (2017) Writing Prompt #4 – It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas