The Ghost of Christmas that Should Have Been

On Ebenezer Scrooge’s fateful Christmas Eve, he was visited by three spirits, and they changed his life forever. The Spirits are familiar to all of us who’ve read Dickens’ book, or watched the many iterations of “Scrooge.” (My personal favorite is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, considered by most, to be the best ever done)

They are the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghosts of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future.

Each Christmas I find myself caught up under the spell of these three “spirits” in the form of memories, current plans, and hopes for what might one day be. But there is another Ghost I have come to recognize at Christmas. He’s a sad Ghost and He doesn’t appear to everybody, saving his hauntings only for those with regret, sorrow, or sadness at Christmas. He is the “Ghost of Christmas That Should Have Been.” He might be the most frightening of all Christmas Spirits.

He started haunting me 18 years ago, when I first got divorced. Instead of showing me shadows of what was, or what is now, or what might one day be, he taunts me with what was supposed to have been. He shows me flashes and glimpses of the Christmases I longed to spend, with the family I dreamed of having, in the home I wanted to build.

His hauntings were muffled and muted for many years, by the magic in my daughter’s eyes. When she was little, and Christmas was still very much a wonder and a spectacle and when it held its childhood excited mystery for her…this ghost was forced into the shadows. I was busy being happy with her, and because of her, and her happiness, and childish innocence banished him to the fringes.

Once in a while, he would step out of the shadows and whisper in my ear: “This isn’t how it was supposed to be” and I would feel the pain shoot through my heart. But my daughter would be smiling and I would quickly cast him aside with “But how it is right now is very good…” and he would go back into hiding. I thought maybe I’d banished him but apparently, he was just biding his time. He knew the day would come when I’d be vulnerable to his attacks and so he waited.

In recent years, he’s been more visible, more vocal, more daring in his attacks. This year…he’s been downright confrontational, right in my face, too close for me to look away. He reminds me of what my Christmas dreams were, and how far from those dreams I find myself.

He shows me visions of the wife I was supposed to have. A wife who would remain and not give up. A wife with whom I had, by this time, built a lifetime of memories with, and who knew me as I knew her. We shared knowing smiles and funny Christmas stories and we hosted parties with those we loved. She was supposed to be my best friend. She was supposed to know me better than anyone ever knew me. She was supposed to have made me better, and softened my toughness, and smoothed out my rough edges. She cheered each victory and comforted each loss, and I returned the favor in kind.

But she never showed up. Not in the 18 years that have come and gone since my divorce. She was never there to wake up to at Christmas, with impatient children knocking at our bedroom door, begging us to get up and get Christmas underway. She was never there to sneak away with and do our secret Santa buying. She never found me and all the romantic, wonderful, thoughtful gifts I would have picked out for her if only somehow, she’d appeared.

But she didn’t. She never became my best friend and knew me well enough to buy the exact, perfect present for me. I never got to unwrap a gift and be overwhelmed by just how much thought must have gone into it, and how perfect it was for me, and how she really had to know me to have seen this perfect thing in a storefront window and thought, “Craig would just love this”

She never laid in bed next to me, wishing it were Christmas morning so she could take this perfect present from its hiding spot and watch me unwrap it. She never showed up and so I have not had the experience of ever having had a perfect gift from a wife who loved me.

This ghost shows me the family I was supposed to have had. The other children. The in laws and out laws and cousins and friends who would come and go throughout the holidays, never wanting to miss time at our house. Relationships would develop and remain. Life would seem impossible without certain of these faces at our table, in our home, and in our hearts. The sort of friendships and relationships that only come from family. The kind that can never include a single man.

There was supposed to be Christmas mornings where my daughter woke to find both her parents there…not one or the other. Short of this, should have been a woman who loved her dad, and loved her as well, so that she’d have the feeling of family at Christmas, even if it was a blend.

There was supposed to be love, and memories, and excitement, and family.

But none of this ever happened and I wonder now, at this point in life, whether it ever will. I wonder if I will ever feel enough excitement about another person to want to share  my life with them. I wonder if I will ever be so loved by another that she’ll go out in search of that perfect gift, and not rest until she finds it, and be excited when she does.

I wonder if my daughter will ever see her dad in love, and see how he does this, and see a woman love him deeply. (She was only 18 months old when her mom and I divorced, so she has no knowledge of what this would look like.)

I wonder if Christmas will ever be what I dream of it being, and what I hoped it would be, now that the wonderful distraction of my daughter as a child has passed.

As a boy, I dreamed of being a parent one day and what kind of Christmas I would have for my family. Perhaps it was there that this particular Ghost of Christmas was born. Perhaps, in reality, he is a monster of my own making. I have always loved Christmas and held a high standard and a romantic notion that could have only been accomplished by a true couple…not by a single man, doing his best to raise a daughter alone.

And so, in that fertile ground, he grew, and on that fertile ground he plants his seeds of regret, disappointment, doubt, and longing. He has never ruined Christmas for me…for I am too much of a hopeless romantic and sentimentalist at Christmas for him to ever take it from me completely. But he has damaged its glow and dimmed its star. This Christmas in particular, has been hard on me in ways I’ve never experienced before.

I need to exorcise this ghost or surrender to his haunting. But I don’t know how to do either. And so, I do nothing. Nothing but enjoy Christmas as I can, and –in my quiet moments—look at his taunting and teasing with honest regret.

Of all the Ghosts of Christmas, he is the most sinister, and the one I am most powerless against.

Christmas is six days away. I have to find a way to silence this ghost before then.