Diary: Patricia Storace, Christmas ghosts and a treat with chestnuts (reprise)

Dear readers,
We thought as a little holiday treat we would repost this piece from our first year by a writer beloved to us, Patricia Storace. It comes from a series she did of reflections on stories and food, you can see links to the others below.
There is still time to give a friend a holiday Book Post book bag: a one-year subscription to Book Post with $25 worth of books at our partner, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi—for the price of one subscription! Just send us a note, per these instructions, and we’ll attach the book bag to your gift.
With my deepest wishes to you all for a safe and peaceful 2024, and my deepest thanks to you for reading Book Post.
Ann (Ann Kjellberg, editor)

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From Patricia Storace:
The Bidding Prayer, one of the loveliest prayers of the Anglican tradition, was written for the Christmas Eve Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols celebrated in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, in 1918, in the first year of peace after World War I. It is recited after singing the processional hymn, “Once in royal David’s city.” “Lastly,” the final verse reads,

let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us,
but upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number,
whose hope was in the Word made flesh,
and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore are one.

The season of Christmas has long been associated with miracle and revelation, a radiant interlude of cosmic transparency in which the living and the dead are present to each other, even though they cannot touch: invisible angels manifest themselves, and ghosts return to their previous lives. The eternal world is momentarily opened.