Tell us a story, please!
(John Everett Millais, A Winter’s Tale)
You all know about Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Tiny Tim, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, and all that. Whether he started it or not, Dickens supported the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas time for many years thereafter. And other writers took up the tradition, notably M. R. James.
I did a long ghost story last year, Nightfeather: Ghosts. This year I didn’t think I’d get to a story, because I’d injured my left arm. However, I had an inspiration this morning, and so, fresh out of my brain, let me present to you, “When the ghost came in from the cold,” this year’s Christmas story.
Sillyverse 
Oh dear, get well soon! Are you left-handed? I don’t recall, but either way I wish you “Refua Shlema” – Complete/whole/full Healing…
Thank you. Ironically, I hurt it while typing the Halloween story! I am right-handed, though, so it has not been a critical problem, and it is getting better. I just didn’t think I was up to do a long story, and I find it harder to think up short ones.
And may you enjoy the rest of this holiday season. 🙂
Interesting! Way to go for writing it! I’m treating myself this weekend to a twofer: your Christmas story and the concluding episode of P&P!
I’m not sure this painting, with its essence of proper Victorian modesty, is quite in keeping with the ghost story told. 🙂
No doubt Millais would be even more horrified, since he was a proper type, save for marrying a divorcee, and a virginal divorcee at that!
I hadn’t known that of him though I like many of his paintings.
It was a famous scandal; the Pre-Raphaelites were loaded with them. Rossetti had Morris’s wife as his mistress, Holman Hunt married his dead wife’s sister, and then, as meontioned Millais married John Ruskin’s wife, who was still a virgin. (I misspoke: Effie had her marriage to Ruskin annulled, not a divorce.) It was a bit of a scandal, and meant that Effie was excluded from many high society functions and from any event involving the monarchy. Millais was honored a great deal toward the end of his life, and when on his deathbed was asked by Queen Victoria if there was anything she could do for him. His answer: officially receive my wife at court.
Could this be why I’ve always felt an unaccountable affinity with the Pre-Raphaelites? 🙂