After an exhausting change of households earlier in the month \u2014 who knew so many boxes of books and board games could exist in a world with so many stairs to carry them up? \u2014 I\u2019ve a precious opportunity for a few days of uninterrupted holiday time to recharge and do a little reading.<\/p>\n
The Feast of Winter Veil<\/a> in World of Warcraft<\/em> is far from the only dose of magic I\u2019ve been finding in the holiday season. Growing up, listening to Andy Williams<\/a> singing \u201cThere\u2019ll be scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago\u201d in an otherwise glitzy, uptempo 60s holiday standard, I have become enamored of the weird and fantastic elements lurking behind the cheerful facade of the season. Scratch the surface \u2014 beneath all the tinsel and commercialized piety and Hallmark movie schmaltz \u2014 and you\u2019ll still find time-lost traces of the heady, pagan wildness of the Lords of Misrule<\/a> in the holidays.<\/p>\n So, this year, I\u2019m taking Williams at his word and am dipping into the ghost stories of M. R. James, whose \u201cGhost Stories of an Antiquary<\/a>\u201d grew out of his Christmastime yarns at King\u2019s College, Cambridge. I\u2019m approaching “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad'” and “The Mezzotint” with a certain amount of anticipation inspired by thoughtful reviews.<\/p>\n Following the breadcrumbs from holiday ghost stories to other marvelous fare has lead me to \u201cThe Box of Delights<\/a>\u201d by John Masefield, a magic-filled, Christmas-time adventure starting at a British rail station, a setting which automatically ticks all the applicable boxes for lovers of a certain strain of the fantastic. I\u2019ve just begun reading it and have high hopes for the experience.<\/p>\n These glimpses of midnight, ghostly worlds will be juxtaposed with a little bit of cozy, ordinary magic with a quick visit to the warmth of \u201cThe Complete Brambly Hedge<\/a>,\u201d which I\u2019ll not even pretend I\u2019m reading for the sake of my niece and nephew. Also on my holiday list is a re-read of \u201cThe Lord of the Rings<\/a>,\u201d which seems appropriate as the cold and dark days slowly begin their incremental turn toward sunlight again. It\u2019s been quite a while since I journeyed to Middle Earth and am looking forward to seeing how the story has changed for me since the last visit.<\/p>\n But, how about you? What are you reading during the holidays? Are you enjoying some spooky fun or tucking into other genres? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After an exhausting change of households earlier in the month \u2014 who knew so many boxes of books and board games could exist in a world with so many stairs to carry them up? \u2014 I\u2019ve a precious opportunity for a few days of uninterrupted holiday time to recharge and do a little reading. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":178546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,43498],"tags":[78087,35,1779],"yst_prominent_words":[18918,10553,16898,10448,8687,9000,8683,14635,35395],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178561,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178542\/revisions\/178561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178542"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=178542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}