In 2009, Loren Eaton started a no-winner, no-money “contest” involving dark, 100-word Christmas stories. The contest was named Advent Ghosts. The tradition is now in its sixth year, and still going quite strong. Each year, I threw my own story into the rink, penning dark 100-word stories for the cold winter months.
The stories grew out of a now-defunct blog, and have found a new home at this website. Each of them is a Christmas meditation, focused through the lens of my theologically informed understanding of the season. The various stories go in several different directions, often providing dark considerations of what it means to put on–or have–all-too-human flesh. Some of them try to imagine “failed” incarnations; others merely reflect on stories not too often told during the Christmas season. In each, I try to reflect on the mystery of Christmas. As I put it:
“During the Christmas season, we re-live not God’s ultimate triumph over evil, but God’s birth as a screaming child in a food-trough meant for animals. We shiver with God, feeling the cold bite of winter on our merely fleshy skin, and we remember that loving God means loving other fellow creatures of fragile flesh and bone. This is the cradle in which love is born, the place where peace enters the world.”
I hope you will join me in these strange, fleeting glimpses of the illuminated darkness of Advent.
Advent Ghosts 