The Ghosts of Christmases Past

Considering the fact that I spent a lot of my childhod wishing I lived in the days of bonnets, butter churns, and corn-husk dolls, it's not surprising that at this time of year, I often find myself wishing that I could time travel. To eat snow covered in maple syrup like Laura Ingalls Wilder! To light the Christmas tree with real candles! To wear a muff and black lace-up boots under layers and layers of skirts! A one-horse open sleigh!

You get my point. It's easy to be romantic in December, to long for back then--whether to your own childhood Christmases or to those of two-hundred years ago. But because we can't go back, it's good once and a while to shut off the nostalgia switch and think about some things that weren't better in days of yore. I mean, let's face it, maple syrup on snow? Probably not so great.

And I for one am pretty relieved that children in Sweden no longer get their presents delivered by Julbocken, or for those not familiar, a man wearing a frightening goat mask made of straw.


Petter and Lotta from Elsa Beskow's classic Petter och Lottas Jul, or Peter and Lotta's Christmas do eventually get out from under the table. I, on the other hand, would have waited there for decades and decades until the more Santa-like Jultomte took scary Julbocken's place.