As Dickens reminds us, ghosts don't only rise up from the past. The most fearsome hail from the future.
Christmas cuts us adrift from life's familiar rhythms: work, leisure, even the structure of the week is upended. The topology of our living space is disrupted by decorations. Relationships are tested by unusual proximity or distance. Our health is called into question by sickness and the cold and too many glasses of wine. Even mortality is at issue. Winter kills.
Sitting beneath the Christmas tree late at night, drink in hand, we're haunted by the life we've chosen. Its past yes, but also its present and future. The turn of the year, like the witching hour, is one of the few reminders of the passage of time that our post-modern culture has left intact.
There is a future, it tells us, and it's coming.
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