Not Twelfth Night
Jan. 6th, 2024 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI always thought that Christmas ended on Twelfth Night: January 6th, also known as Epiphany, the day the three kings finally arrived at the stable. That's when decorations must be taken down, right? Then valydiarosada pointed out that if you count twelve days from Christmas Day, the twelfth day, the one with all the inconvenient gifts from your true love, is January 5th. There's no arguing with this: once you count it out, it's obvious. Christmas ends on January 5th, and the following day, Christians celebrate the coming of the Magi. Two related festivals on successive days suggest that something has gone wrong, and that Occam's Razor should be applied, but that's how it is. So today is not Twefth Night. I expect everybody except me already knew that.
Thursday wasn't Twelfth Night either, but it was that date of Phantoms, a now-traditional event which has come to mark the end of our Christmas. Originally 'Phantoms at the Phil', from its location in Newcastle's magnificent private library, it consists of a trio of spine-chilling tales newly written and read by their authors to a delighted audience. This year the Phantoms had exorcised themselves from the Lit & Phil only to settle a short distance along the road in Prohibition. Downstairs this is a bar haunted by its past existence as a jazz café, but upstairs -
- well, I thinkdurham_rambler's photo does a good job of conveying the combination of old-fashioned comfort and ghostly unreality. Gail-Nina Anderson (left, shielding her eyes against the light) said it resembled a well-heeled bordello, but while there was certainly an abundance of drapery, there was also something of the gentlemen's club, or the sort of library on whose floor the master of the house will be discovered, horribly murdered. Sean O'Brien, right, looked entirely at home there. Out of shot, keeping a safe distance from these two sinister apparitions, was guest speaker David Almond.
We habitually refer to Phantoms as 'an evening of ghost stories', but actual ghosts are in a minority: some years there are none at all. This year Gail-Nina's story was a characteristic blend of disturbing iconography and parish gossip: something nasty in the chapel of Saint Anthony Abbot; Sean's trademark horror crept up despite the daylight and open windows of an artist's workroom (am I inventing the Mediterranean sunshine?). It was David who gave us an actual ghost dispatched back whence it came, and left us - well, left me, at any rate, wondering whether this was a good thing.
valydiarosada pointed out that if you count twelve days from Christmas Day, the twelfth day, the one with all the inconvenient gifts from your true love, is January 5th. There's no arguing with this: once you count it out, it's obvious. Christmas ends on January 5th, and the following day, Christians celebrate the coming of the Magi. Two related festivals on successive days suggest that something has gone wrong, and that Occam's Razor should be applied, but that's how it is. So today is not Twefth Night. I expect everybody except me already knew that.Thursday wasn't Twelfth Night either, but it was that date of Phantoms, a now-traditional event which has come to mark the end of our Christmas. Originally 'Phantoms at the Phil', from its location in Newcastle's magnificent private library, it consists of a trio of spine-chilling tales newly written and read by their authors to a delighted audience. This year the Phantoms had exorcised themselves from the Lit & Phil only to settle a short distance along the road in Prohibition. Downstairs this is a bar haunted by its past existence as a jazz café, but upstairs -
- well, I think
durham_rambler's photo does a good job of conveying the combination of old-fashioned comfort and ghostly unreality. Gail-Nina Anderson (left, shielding her eyes against the light) said it resembled a well-heeled bordello, but while there was certainly an abundance of drapery, there was also something of the gentlemen's club, or the sort of library on whose floor the master of the house will be discovered, horribly murdered. Sean O'Brien, right, looked entirely at home there. Out of shot, keeping a safe distance from these two sinister apparitions, was guest speaker David Almond.We habitually refer to Phantoms as 'an evening of ghost stories', but actual ghosts are in a minority: some years there are none at all. This year Gail-Nina's story was a characteristic blend of disturbing iconography and parish gossip: something nasty in the chapel of Saint Anthony Abbot; Sean's trademark horror crept up despite the daylight and open windows of an artist's workroom (am I inventing the Mediterranean sunshine?). It was David who gave us an actual ghost dispatched back whence it came, and left us - well, left me, at any rate, wondering whether this was a good thing.
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Date: 2024-01-07 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-07 12:09 pm (UTC)