Yuletide in Amnesty

It is Yuletide day in Amnesty, New Hampshire, and for the Goodes, Smythes and Osbournes, that means the company of family and friends... and Krampus and HP Lovecraft

Yuletide in Amnesty

It was December in Amnesty, New Hampshire, and that meant celebration with family and friends. If you were of the Catholic persuasion, like one quarter of the town, that meant Christmas. But if you were Wiccan like the majority of Amnesty residents, then it was Yuletide.

Yuletide was of a much older tradition than Christmas, but due to the fact that the latter largely borrowed practice from the former, many of the rituals were the same, with a few variations and modifications on both sides. In Amnesty, things got started on December 24th with what the locals dubbed "Krampus Eve." ¹ Krampus was the original version of Santa Claus. Instead of a rotund, jolly old man, Krampus had horns and claws and a penchant for putting coal in a naughty little boy or girl's stocking, and then either throwing them in a sack, beating them with a stick, hauling them off to his lair, all of the above or a combination of these acts. Because in German mythology Krampus was the son of Hel, goddess of the underworld, he was a deity that must be appeased and not taken lightly. In Amnesty, this meant that milk and homemade cookies were left out (Amnesty mothers and daughters enjoyed baking the cookies together), and small children slept with their parents.

At a designated time in the evening of the 24th, the citizens of Amnesty gather in the park for the Yuletide balefire ritual. The ancient Yuletide ritual is performed by the Wiccan citizens of Amnesty under the direction of the witch queens. At the conclusion of the ritual, the citizens walk back to their homes to light their indivual Yule logs, while the witch queens light torches from the balefire. They then walk back to their homes (just across the street) and light their own Yule logs with the torches, after sprinkling the present yule log with the ashes from the log of the previous year. The witch queens, representing Amnesty, do this on behalf of the town, for its protection in the Winter days ahead. The Yule log burns throughout the remainder of the evening, until just after midnight.

On Yuletide morning, the families of Amnesty awake and exchange gifts. Then the Yuletide ham is prepared for the Yuletide feast, which can include both family members and friends. After the feast, the Yule log is once again lit, and the family members and guests gather around the hearth to enjoy each other's company. As with Krampus Eve, the Yule log remains lit until just after midnight, concluding the festivities.

Because it was late December, Wiccan Amnesty school students had been off for several

days, due to Yuletide/Christmas recess. And although the Wiccan New Year began on Halloween (or Samhain, pronounced "sow'n"), school would not begin again until after January 1st. This also meant that college and university students had returned home at least two weeks before, at the end of the fall semester and final exams. They would not be returning to school for another two to three weeks.

These school and university schedules were also in effect for the Goode, Smythe and Osbourne families. Guenevere Goode and Yarra Govinda-Smythe were in the middle of Amnesty High School's two week Yuletide/Christmas recess, while Constance "Connie" Osbourne had been home from the fall semester of her freshman year at Harvard University since the middle of the month. This had been the first time in months that Connie had been home for more than two days, and her mother Pandora and her best friends Guen and Yarra had been taking full advantage of the opportunity.

It was Yuletide day, and the Goodes, Smythes and Osbournes were gathered at the large Smythe dinner table, enjoying each other's company and the delicious Yuletide meal that the three witch queens had prepared. Present was Charity, Guenevere and Integrity Goode; Patience, Yarra and Chalavera "Chevy" Smythe; Pandora and Connie Osbourne and two Amnesty elders that lived in the small cottage on the Smythe property, Brunhilde Ingersoll and Evie Meadows.

Brunhilde, in her nineties, was a woman of Danish decent. She was recognized as

Amnesty's foremost authority on Norse culture and mythology. Adored by the witch

queens and Guen, Yarra and Connie as much as their own grandmothers, Brunhilde bought the Smythe guest cottage from Patience's parents some forty years before. Evelyn

"Evie" Meadows, Brunhilde's housemate, had only been an Amnesty resident for

approximately six months. In her mid-eighties, Evie grew up in the now-defunct town of Zeeland as the daughter of fundamentalist Christian theologians. For seventy years, Evie practiced the Craft in a solitary sense, but was now a member of Brunhilde's Amnesty Elders' coven. And although they did not know each other for long, Brunhilde and Evie had become inseparable, like sisters.

Evie, after looking Connie up and down, turned to Pandora with a wide smile.

"Connie has become a very pretty young woman," she said. "She has Aleister's dark hair and eyes. And your figure."

Aleister was Rockford County Sheriff Aleister Anderson, Connie's father.

Pandora looked at her daughter with a sly grin. Connie was a very pretty young woman, as Evie had said. She featured styled raven hair, full lips and mischievous dark blue eyes. The younger Osbourne was slender, of average height and, like her mother Pandora, buxom. "Yeah, Connie's got Al's hair and eyes, and my lips, tits and a*s."

This brought laughter from the old women and giggles from the rest of the table.

Connie, looking at her mother, returned her grin. "Well, then, I got the best of both," she said.

"No argument, there," Pandora said with a look at Connie before taking a bite of her cranberry sauce. Pandora Osbourne was a buxom platinum blonde with light brown eyes, in her late thirties. One of three active witch queens in town, she had served as the mayor of Amnesty for a number of years.

"And thank you, Evie." Connie said. That was sweet."

"You're welcome, honey," Evie said.

"And speaking of dad," Connie said, "where is he? Is he coming over?"

"Later, he said," Pandora answered. "He had to go to Rachel's parents' place first."

"Of course," Connie said with a sarcastic undertone.

"Connie," Pandora said, "you know she's his wife."

"And I'm his daughter," Connie said. "And you're the mother of said daughter. His former common law wife?"

A look from Pandora.

"I'm just saying."

"Constance Osbourne," Pandora said with a grin, as she buttered her slice of Italian bread. "Everyone at this table knows you very well, and that when you quote 'just say,' you imply three times as much."

"Mawm!"

"I'm just saying."

"You're implying."

"Eat your dinner."

Laughter from the rest of the table. When it died down, Chevy spoke.

"So, Connie," he said. "How's school going? What are your end of the first semester impressions of Harvard?"

Chalavera "Chevy" Patel-Smythe was the husband of Patience Smythe and the adoptive father of Yarra. A lifelong resident of Amnesty, he was of average height and handsome, with shoulder-long, jet black styled hair and dark eyes. Chevy was a local band manager and studio musician who was mostly on tour with his various bands. If he was home, Chevy usually could be found in the twenty-four track home studio that he had built on the Smythe's second floor, next door to Yarra's room. Indeed, it was to Patience and Yarra a welcome occasion to have Chevy home for a short period of time, before the next scheduled band tour would take him away for a considerable stretch once again.

Connie shrugged. "It's OK, I guess. Very old. Stuffy. Haunted by Puritans, literally and figuratively. All-in-all? Very American."

Pandora looked at her daughter. "I'm shelling out almost three-hundred thousand dollars, here, missy."

"Minus my one-hundred thousand dollar scholarship."

"Yes, minus your one-hundred thousand dollar scholarship. Woop-de-doo. So nice of

Uncle Sam to pay for one year, while I pay for the other three." A sigh. "The Yard better be better than just 'OK, I guess.' That's all I gotta say."

"It's interesting, mom, how's that?" Connie said with a return look at her mother. "That's

all I got, right now."

"So, what's the matter, Connie?" Pandora asked with concern. She felt that there was something more going on with her daughter.

"I miss Amnesty."

Pandora and the others smiled. "Well, that's understandable, honey," Pandora said. "You're not the only one. "I was the same way my first year at Dartmouth."

"And Charity and I was that way, too," Patience Smythe said. "At Miskatonic." Patience, one of the other two witch queens in Amnesty besides Pandora, was a stunning woman in terms of looks, with high cheekbones, hazel eyes and very long, frosted brown hair. She was very tall and slender, with large, perfectly round breasts. Patience was a year younger than Pandora.

While Pandora got a free ride to Dartmouth due to the fact that her father was a Classics professor there, Charity and Patience attended Miskatonic University in the ancient north central Massachusetts town of Arkham, made famous by the frequent reference to both the school and the town in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Although largely ignored and forgotten by the general public due to its inclination towards strange phenomena, Mistkatonic was known among academicians as one of the preeminent institutions of learning in the country. It was founded in the early 1600's and was, in many ways, the pagan Harvard. The school was long revered as one of the leading centers for occult and paranormal studies in the world. And although the three witch queens had attended different schools, they each held advanced degrees in Occult Studies.

"Arkham," Integrity said with a chuckle. "Now there's a spooky town for ya. Non-residents think that Amnesty is spooky, but they've obviously never been to Arkham and the surrounding area. Every freakin' time we would visit Charity at her dorm in what used to be the Witch House, it would freak me out. I couldn't wait to get outta there."

Integrity Goode was Charity Goode's younger sister and Guen's aunt. She was twenty-eight to Charity's thirty-six years of age, and two years away from becoming the fourth active witch queen in Amnesty. Charity was the owner of Integrity Realty, located on Main Street in Amnesty, across the street from where her sister and Patience ran their occult and new age bookstore, Pandora's Box. Integrity's light blonde, straight shoulder-length hair was dark at the roots, and her eyes were light brown. Slightly shorter of stature than her sister Charity (who was as tall as Patience), Integrity sported a seemingly perpetual tan and was very desirable to the Amnesty male population. Of course, since Integrity was single (and that by choice) she was very available, as well.

"What's so spooky about it?" Yarra asked her mother. "And what's the Witch House?"

"Teg's right," Patience said with a look at Charity. "Arkham is an extremely old town-- over fifty years older than Amnesty-- and it has a very checkered past."

"When we went to school there, it wasn't anything like it was back in Lovecraft's time and

before," Charity said, as Patience shook her head in agreement. "But still, it had a very Gothic, spooky atmosphere. Like a psychic engery still present. You could feel it."

"Cool," Yarra said. "But what's the Witch House?"

"Our dorm house," Charity said with a look at Patience. "And also a place where a lot of weird stuff happened. Read 'Dreams in the Witch House' by Lovecraft, if you're so interested."

Charity Goode was the third witch queen in Amnesty and the present head of the witch queen coven, the most prestigious coven in town. She was the same age as Patience, who was a few months younger. Charity was an older carbon copy of her daughter Guen, with strawberry blonde hair, bright green eyes and freckles.

"Wait," Guen said. "H.P. Lovecraft the writer? What's he got to do with where you guys went to school?"

Guenevere Goode was seventeen years-old. Although she looked a younger image of her mother, she did not possess Charity's height. Guen was a petite girl that stood a few inches over five feet tall. But what Guen lacked in height, she more than made up for in intellect. Valedictorian of her class, Guen had already been accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design to study Architecture.

"I'm surprised, little miss know-it-all," Charity said with an amused look at her daughter. "You've never read 'The Colour out of Space,' or 'Dreams in the Witch House? How 'bout 'Herbert West-- Reanimator?' Lovecraft was required reading at Miskatonic."

"Not really my cup of tea, mom," Guen said. "But, what? Lovecraft mentions where you went to school or something?"

"He does more than that," Chevy said. "Unlike you, Guen, I was a big fan of Lovecraft when I was in school. It was one of the reasons I married Patience; someone who actually lived in the town of Arkham and went to Miskatonic University. Wow. Now, that's sexy."

This brought a punch in Chevy's arm by Patience, and much laughter at the table. "That would be true," Patience said with a look at her husband, "if there wasn't the fact that you were going out with me ever since high school."

"But, anyway," Chevy continued with a chuckle, "a lot of weird stuff used to go on in that town in the late 1800's and into the early twentieth century. Not to mention the fact that it was founded by Puritans, so there's that."

"OK, but like what stuff?" Yarra asked. Yarra Govinda-Smythe was approximately a month younger than Guen, from whom she was almost never absent. Yarra was born in Bombay, India, but came to the states with the Smythes after her parents (close school friends of Patience and Chevy) were killed in a plane crash. She was adopted by the Smythes shortly thereafter. Yarra was a perpetually upbeat girl that loved pop rock and

county music and played the bass guitar in Glamourama, a pop rock/country band started by Guen, Connie and herself. Yarra desired to become a studio engineer and musician upon graduation, like Chevy.

"Well, I would rather you guys got a volume of Lovecraft and read this stuff for yourselves," Chevy said. "But, to whet your appetite; attempts to bring back the dead, astral projection and visits from aliens."

"But Lovecraft is a fiction writer," Connie said, who was majoring in creative writing at Harvard. "So, how did these things actually happen? He just made them up."

"Connie," Charity said with a look to Patience, "if you ever were in Arkham, you might think differently. But you have to actually be there to know what we're talking about."

"Road trip," Yarra said with a giggle. "No, really, we should."

"I'm into it," Connie said with pursed lips. "How 'bout you, Guen?"

"I guess," Guen said thoughtfully. She was more easily spooked than her friends. "But I think I want to read these stories first and know what to expect."

"Knowing you," Integrity said, "you'll get freaked out like I did and not go." This earned Charity's younger sister a bug-eyed expression from her neice, which she abruptly answered by sticking her tongue out.

"So, have you been there, dad?" Yarra asked Chevy.

"Oh, yeah," Chevy said. "Many times, to visit your mother."

"What was it like? Were you scared?"

"It's a wild place," Chevy said. "Even now, decades after all the weird stuff was happening. But some stuff isn't there anymore, like the Blasted Heath."

"The Blasted Heath? What's that?"

"You know Cross Island on the Amnesty River?"

"I've heard of it," Yarra said.

"I know about it," Connie said. "That's where my dad found the burnt bodies of the minister and his girlfriend.² But he said that the island doesn't look all burnt up, like it

used to. Now it's grown back."

"Right," Chevy said. "Well, the Blasted Heath was supposed to look like Cross Island used to. But unlike Cross Island, the trees and the landscape there never grew back. That whole area was flooded out to make way for the new resevoir. That's what's there today. A resevoir. That's what I saw when I went."

"So, what? It's a bunch of trees that got burnt?" Guen asked.

Chevy just smiled with a look at Charity and Patience, who were also smiling in conspiracy. "Read 'The Color out of Space,' Guen. You'll know what it is. And what happened there."

"Supposedly happened there," Connie said.

"Don't listen to Connie, Guen. Just read it."

"I will," Guen said.

"Desert, anyone?" Patience asked, getting up from the table. "We have homemade pie, ice cream and cookies leftover from Krampus Eve."

"Did Krampus come last night?" Yarra asked, wide-eyed.

"He doesn't come around anymore," Patience said with a shrug. "When children get past a certain age." A smile. "But it's still fun to bake the cookies."

"Yes, it is," Yarra agreed.

"But he used to come?" Guen asked with interest.

"Oh, yeah," Charity said.

"How do you know?" Connie asked.

"Because the milk and cookies were gone the next morning, silly," Pandora said with a smirk.

"Oh. Really?"

"Yeah, really. This is Amnesty, remember?"

Connie nodded and pursed her lips. "But none of you guys have ever actually seen Krampus, right?"

At this, the three witch queens shared a conspiratorial smile as their eyes turned to Brunhilde.

"We haven't," Pandora said, "but Brunhilde has."

"You have, Brunhilde?"

The old woman nodded her head. "Yes, honey, when I was a little girl in Denmark. A chuckle. "I suppose I was a little too curious one Krampus eve."

"What happened?"

"I thought I heard something, so I got out of bed, snuck downstairs and saw this very alwful looking creature in the living room devouring a plate of cookies. Sort of like the Cookie Monster does, you know?"

Laughter.

"What did he look like?"

"Oh, pretty close to the pictures that you see of him. Horns, very long, sharp nails."

"Did he see you?"

"Almost. As I was watching him, one of the stair steps creaked. He turned around to see

no more than a pair of little feet bounding back up the steps, I'm sure, because I ran," Brunhilde said with a laugh. The others at the table joined her.

"He didn't try to chase you?"

"No, he wouldn't chase me. I was a good girl that year, so he left me alone. But if more little boys and girls actually saw Krampus, they would never be bad, believe me."

"They'd put him out of business," Chevy said with a chuckle.

"Yes," Brunhilde said with a nod.

"And there's no way that it could have been your father, all dressed up to look like Krampus?" Connie asked.

"Oh, no, honey. My father was in bed, fast asleep. It was after three in the morning."

"And you're sure?"

"Yes, honey, I'm sure. It was Krampus Eve. I was sleeping with my parents in their bed."

"Oh, yeah... right. But there have been actual times when Krampus would take the bad children?" Connie asked.

"Oh, yes," Brunhilde said. "There were several instances reported when I was growing up of children going missing on Krampus eve. They were never found."

"Spooky," Yarra said. "What about in Amnesty?"

"One or two throughout the years, I think," Pandora said. "You can read about it in the local history books at Pandora's Box or in our libraries, or at the Amnesty Library. But I think that way back when, there were a couple of families that said that Krampus attempted to abduct their children, or that a son or a daughter was found out in the Amnesty Woods, severely beaten with what must have been a large stick and hanging in a large sack from a tree branch. Most of the children involved had no recollection of what happened."

"Wait," Guen said. "Hanging in a tree?"

"Uh, huh," Brunhilde said. "Some traditions believe that Krampus collects the children and deposits them in trees before they are taken to his lair."

"Which is where?"

"Well, most likely the North Pole, or the underworld. I'd go more with the underworld theory, myself. But anyway. Others believe that he just puts the children in the trees and leaves them there. The stories are diverse, depending on where your from. Some beliefs of Krampus just have him put coal in a bad little boy or girl's stocking."

"That's getting off easy," Chevy quipped. "They should all have it so good."

"And there's no chance here that these children were actually abused by their parents, is there?" Connie asked. "That would make more sense. I mean, couldn't Krampus in some cases just be an euphemism or even an excuse for an abusive parent?" A look to Brunhilde. "I don't mean to say that what you saw wasn't real, Brunhilde. I'm just saying."

"I know, honey," Brunhilde said.

"Just like your father," Pandora said with a critical smile. "That's what he would say and what he would try to prove. But sometimes, my girl, there is no other explanation."

"I guess, mom, if you say so."

Silence.

"So, how's the Sox gonna do next year?" Chevy asked a rather amused dining room.

1The Amnesty citizens recognize Krampus eve on the 24th and Yuletide on the 25th, instead of the traditional days of December 5th and 21st, respectively. This is so that these observances coincide with Christmas Eve and Christmas, out of respect for Amnesty non-Wiccans and for convenience in planning school calenders for a pagan/Christian school system.

2Cross Island, a rally meeting spot for the Klan in the twenties with ties to the fundamental Christian town Zeeland , was located on the Amnesty River where it ran parallel to the canal path, near a densely wooded, rugged area not far from the canal park arboretum. Sheriff Anderson and his men had discovered the remains of Father Wheeler and his mistress the wealthy lady Rheinhardt there after the sheriff had received visions from the murdered couple concerning their whereabouts.

Reviews

[Lady_Wicca]

Blessed Yuletide, but Yuletide is celebrated from December 21 to January 1. Great read.
Blessed Be and Merry Meet.