Holidays, Ghosts and Bah Humbug!

So I shall soon be treading the boards of the Grand Theatre with my Abbey family in our production of a Christmas Carol. This has come around so very quickly, maybe because I have felt like I have been paddling so frantically just to keep my head above water these last few months that I didn’t stop to realise just how quickly the months had been disappearing before my eyes. The music in this production is great but really gets stuck in my head so much so that I find myself humming it inwardly and outwardly a lot more than ever before, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was even mumbling it in my sleep. If you are in Swansea come and see this production as it will be anything but amateur (if you have seen any of Abbey’s previous shows you will already know this).

As with everything else these days I still find my thoughts turning to my writing (can’t help it, it just seems to happen these days) and I was thinking in my fantasy world I haven’t even thought about things like Christmas and Halloween etc. Would they celebrate similar events or have other ideas? I guess it comes down to that touchy religion subject and what kind of belief systems would they have? Will they follow similar schools of thought as we do? Or have different lore and mythology which sees them having holidays like Christmas in the middle of the Summer months? Would there be room for a Scrooge character too? And whilst I am at it what about ghosts? Would they pop in for a visit? Be an everyday fixture as normal as setting a place for yourself at the table..you’d just set another place for a dear departed aunt..”she can’t eat the food but she likes to join in the conversation”.

I have read quite a few novels but my mind is foggy on the details of if holidays are celebrated (especially in a lot of the fantasy novels I have read) perhaps other writers have just chosen to gloss over this aspect of their writing because it gives them far too much to think about (us fantasy writers already have a lot to do creating worlds etc to bother about whether Mr S. has a turkey to stuff this year or not!).

As a writer I often find my mind filled with more questions that answers for long periods of times, but I am in no doubt that I will discover the answers soon enough and in the meantime I will just enjoy channelling my inner monk/cleaner/ghost who knows maybe they might lead me to new characters for my books and I can’t wait to find out.