Ghosts of Christmas Past - by Susan Price
My mother loved Christmas. You know who he is - illustrated by T Nast ( Public Domain Review) She was born in 1929, the youngest of six children. Every year, at Christmas, she told us about Christmas when she'd been a child. The Christmas, for instance when, coming down in the morning, she found a monkey in the kitchen. One of her three older brothers had somehow acquired it at the Christmas Wake (a fair.) Christmas spirit had probably been strong in the brother, if not the monkey. What happened to the monkey? As with many of my mother's stories, I don't know. I can't remember her ever telling me that. Perhaps she didn't know herself. I can't imagine the monkey remaining a member of the household for very long after my grandmother saw it. Every Christmas without fail, we heard about the big white enamelled bucket. It had a lid. It was a lidded big white enamel bucket. For most of the year the big white...