Tag Archives: Christmas

278 – Kallikantzaroi: Christmas Goblins And Legends Of The Twelvetide

Every year, it seems like the Christmas season starts earlier and earlier, and you can see people getting annoyed about it on social media. Some people say it’s inappropriate to get your Christmas decorations up until the day after Thanksgiving. But it’s not like department stores are listening to this, they get their Holiday displays up immediately after Halloween is over. And while Jesus may be the reason for the season, Christmas is the reason that most retail outlets stay in business.

And of course, the early Church had no idea when Jesus’ actual birthday was, so they tried to picked a day that would be easy for recent converts. It wasn’t that unusual, because Roman emperors would arbitrarily pick a day to celebrate their birthdays instead of the actual anniversary of their birth.) December 25th worked out perfectly because you already had a Roman celebration called Saturnalia, which was their big yearly party complete with debauchery, pig offerings, human sacrifices of Gladiators, and customs that put the social order on its head like masters serving their slaves. In other Pagan areas you had Solstice celebrations and dancing and singing around the longest night of the year. People were used to having a party around December, so it seemed like putting Christmas in December was a perfect opportunity.

Are you not entertained, Saturn?

In modern America, we have been conditioned to celebrate before the Holidays, mostly to encourage the gift-giving aspect and to keep our retail stores in business. Back in the Middle Ages, the time before Christmas, Advent, was a time of fasting, much like Lent before Easter. They would sacrifice a little comfort to show their respect for the season and then start pigging out for 12 days starting on Christmas. Because there wasn’t a lot of agricultural work, peasants got the full Twlevetide off during the Middle Ages and there was some reason to party every day. It makes our official holidays of Christmas and New Year’s Day seem pretty weak by comparison. And they kept their Christmas decorations up until Candlemas on February 2nd, which was the date Mary went to temple and is supposed to have sacrificed a lamb and a dove as part of her post-birth purification ritual. So if anyone ever tells you magic isn’t part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, remind them that the Virgin Mary had to burn a baby sheep at a temple and slaughter a dove for her sins. And then we have a special Mass and Feast day to celebrate that animal sacrifice.

You would be surprised how many people have drawn pictures of Jesus getting circumcised…

So, the time of year starting on Christmas and going until January 6th (which was the day that the Three Wise Men who were following the Star of Bethlehem showed up to meet Jesus in person) is known as the Twelvetide. Back in the Middle Ages, there was a Feast Day for each day of the 12 and now we only really think about it because of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song.

And here’s a little hometown pride for us (being from Wisconsin). The song was introduced to the United States in Milwaukee! Emily Brown of the Downer Teacher’s College found the song in a book on a trip to England and then she brought it back for her own Christmas pageant in 1910 and that was the first time it was sung in America!

From the book “The Milwaukee Downer Woman” by Lynne Kleinman.

But because there was an almost two-week long religious holiday around the Solstice and New Year every year, plenty of legends and traditions of the Twelvetide arose themselves. We’ve talked in detail about Krampus and Iceland’s Christmas monsters, but another fun Yuletide beastie is the Kallikantzaroi, who are the Greek goblins of Christmas and are active during the 12 days of Christmas.

The Kallikantzaroi as featured on the TV show, “Grimm”

They appear differently in different areas of Greece, with some saying that they’re tall ugly humans with dark complexions and others saying they are short and hairy with bulging red eyes. They act more like drunken idiots than a force of evil by urinating in flowerbeds, breaking furniture, and basically wreaking havoc on the nights during the Christmastide.

The Greeks have a variety of ways to ward off the Kallikantzaroi including making crosses of coal on the windows of the house, burning a log from a thorny tree in the fireplace, or sometimes putting the bottom jaw of a pig behind the door or in the chimney (there’s our sacrifice again!)

In this episode, we talk about the Christmas goblins as well as other interesting legends and traditions of the Twelve Days of Christmas, including:

  • How children born on Christmas Day have the risk of becoming Kallikantzaroi themselves!
  • Also wreaking havoc is the English “Lord of Misrule” during Twelvetide
  • How the Feast of the Innocents remembers the particularly nasty Christmas story of King Herod and his slaughter of children in Bethlehem
  • The role reversals of Twelfth Night and their origin in Saturnalia
  • Why fasting, once part of the Christmas tradition during Advent, is so popular among religions

For the song this week, we picked a classic English stomper that we know was regularly sung during the Twelvetide. It’s easy to make merry with this call and response Christmas party song from the 1700s, “I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In)”!

I saw three ships come sailing in,   
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three?
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
And what was in those ships all three?
On Christmas day in the morning.

Our Saviour Christ and his lady
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
Our Saviour Christ and his lady,
 On Christmas day in the morning. 

Pray whither sailed those ships all three?
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
Pray whither sailed those ships all three?
On Christmas day in the morning.

Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas day in the morning.

And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas day in the morning.

And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas day in the morning.

And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas day in the morning.

Then let us all rejoice, again,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
Then let us all rejoice, again,
On Christmas day in the morning.

123 – Jesus Is An Alien: Life At A Higher Density With Reverend John Polk

When we met Reverend John Polk and heard the title of his first book, Yahweh, The Biblical God Is An Alien, we knew that a conversation with him would be the perfect Christmas special. After all, this is the time of year when Americans think about religion the most. To quote a million bumper stickers, Jesus is the reason for the season.

reverend john polk jesus is an alien
Wait, that’s not the right bumper sticker

We’ve covered Christmas ghost stories, Christmas monsters, and even Krampus, the Christmas demon. We’ve also talked about how the original translations of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Book of Revelation sound an awful lot like extraterrestrial encounters.

But Reverend John Polk is a metaphysical minister who can communicate to angels, extraterrestrials, and even the alien-creator-God itself, Yahweh, who he refers to as Enlil (the Sumerian god of the air) and they form a pantheon of aliens, Annunaki, hybrids, and extradimensional entities than inhabit his multiverse. And according to the good Reverend, Jesus was an alien-human hybrid engineered by Yahweh.

It sounds wild, but it’s very like the work of Zecharia Sitchin, the man who gave us Nibiru, the mysterious Planet X. I listened to Sitchin on Coast to Coast AM for years and thought he just sounded like an old Russian looney tunes. But this year, astronomers found credible evidence of a Planet X in our solar system, beyond Pluto. Now is it Sitchin’s Nibiru with the Annunaki hanging out just waiting to swing by in orbit to come for a visit and meddle with our evolution again? Well, the jury’s out on that. But just the fact that they found a Planet X, means that Sitchin’s ideas might be worth revisiting.

And Reverend John Polk might be saying some unusual things, but if we’re going to take religious stories on faith – with burning bushes, water into wine, Joseph Smith’s golden plates, Mohammed and his flying horse, etc… well, then let’s listen to Polk’s message and see what he’s trying to communicate.

Arthur C. Clarke’s most famous line is arguably “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And to me, the idea that Biblical stories and religious legends come from primitive human encounters with ultra-advanced alien technologies make a lot more sense than supernatural power.

But faith, even in the face of technology, means something. Erich von Däniken, the man who gave us a modern framework for Ancient Aliens in his seminal Chariots of the Gods?, always talks about his Christian faith in interviews.


Chariots of the Gods Lyrics – Sunspot – Ancient… by sunspot_mike

And Reverend John Polk is a man who believes. He started seeing angels when he was 5 and not long after he started communicating with them about the nature of the universe. Through what he calls “downloads” to his consciousness, he began to discover that he could perceive beings who were all around us, but existed in different “densities” or dimensions to what we humans normally can identify.

It’s these beings that led him to understand that the gods that we worship are actually aliens who feed on our prayer energy and are harvesting it to raise themselves to a higher plane of existence. They interfered with the [biology of early man to predispose us towards religious experiences in order to create more of that spiritual energy.

And Yahweh, the alien-creator-god was willing to adapt to collect more energy. The God of the Old Testament was a jealous and angry deity who turned people into pillars of salt, asked his prophets to sacrifice their children, and drowned the entire planet save for one family. When human culture was understanding more about the planet, changing from the cruel Bronze Age to the kinder Iron Age, Yahweh decided to soften his tone by introducing his son, a mixture of his alien DNA with the Virgin Mary’s human genes, creating a hybrid who could bridge the gap, Jesus.

reverend john polk jesus is an alien
Really think that the Star of Bethlehem was a naturally occurring astronomical event?

This softer version of Yahweh is represented in the Gospels and the New Covenant that Jesus delivers at the Last Supper. While the Hebrew God had a ton of rules including the kosher laws and circumcision, Jesus says that all you have to do is partake in Communion. It’s like a slackening of restrictions in order to make it easier for people to believe. And it works, throughout the first two Millennia, the Abrahamic religions make up over 3 billion people on the planet. That’s a sizable chunk of the entire human race, all delivering their prayer energy to the same original God.

reverend john polk jesus is an alien
Yahweh has been working out, baby!

And Polk is convinced that Enlil/Yahweh has to change again, because he needs to move the human race on from worshipping Him so that he can jump up to the next plane of existence. That’s why Reverend Polk is convinced we’ll get full UFO/alien disclosure in our lifetime. When humanity understands that all religions are basically the same because we’ve been praying to frickin’ aliens for all of time, it will help tear down the walls that countries and cultures have created and help us realize that we’re all the same.

Whether or not you believe Reverend Polk, that Jesus is an alien or that life on Earth was altered by extraterrestrials who wanted to farm our belief for their own spiritual needs, his message is one of inclusion. It doesn’t matter who you pray to or what particular deity you choose to (or not to) believe in, we’re all part of the same family and finding a way to care about others, especially ones that you don’t agree with, is an important part of being a human. And that’s about as nice of a Christmas message that I can think of.

In the interview we talk about Polk’s latest book as well, Blue Beings: Visitation At The UFO Conference, which is a strange scenario of unusual creatures being seen at a Maine UFO Experiencers conference during a viewing of Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton. Wendy and I saw the documentary in May, and while we didn’t see any blue beings, it’s definitely worth a watch!

For more information on Reverend John Polk and to check out his books, please visit his official website.

For this week’s Sunspot song, we couldn’t resist creating a new Christmas track. Since Jesus was a hybrid, our song is a mixture of a few Yuletide favorites with some revised words to represent his unique extraterrestrial heritage, here’s “Jesus Is An Alien”.

Two thousand years ago they came down from beyond
they found an innocent girl to plant an inhuman spawn
Pretending they were angels, with authority from above
created a superbeing, but at least he preached some love.

Jesus is an alien, with DNA from space.
a human/ET hybrid born on Christmas Day.
Jesus is an alien, from otherworldly seed,
an extraterrestrial plot to harvest our belief.

UFOs all over the globe,
Jesus is an alien.
Tis the season for anal probes,
Jesus is an alien,
He came to earth to sermonize
Jesus is an alien,
Mary was in vitro fertilized,
Jesus is an alien.

Over our rooftops watching us
pretending to be St. Nickolas
pacify our species is their ploy
controlling our children with some toys
Abduction, grab us while we sleep
Missing time, people think we’re crazy,
Over our rooftops, zap zap zap
Wiping our minds with just a snap.

Jesus is an alien, bred with human genes,
to fight the the Prince of Darkness, His interdimensional enemy,
a king of kings to rule us, but we nailed him to a tree.
He’s half-earthling and half a spaceman, Half a spaceman,
He is half an earthling, half a spaceman.

71 – Christmas Monsters: Ten Terrors of the Yuletide

Christmas is all about peace on Earth, goodwill towards men, hey, it’s the time to say “I love you”, right? We make jokes about Santa’s list including the kids who are “naughty and nice”, but no one really means it. Even the naughty kids seem to get presents for the holidays. All the bullies I grew up with got presents from Santa Claus (even if some of them probably had Judd Nelson-from-Breakfast Club-style Christmases.) And I’m the only person I know that actually got coal in my stocking from St. Nick if I wasn’t behaving. It seems like we don’t have to worry about Christmas monsters.

But why bother with the naughty? After all, you don’t buy things for naughty kids and the Christmas shopping season is what keep’s America’s retail chains in business. And don’t let me sound like I’m being critical, the commercialization of Christmas can be fun, giving gifts is fun. Celebrating when it would otherwise be disgustingly cold and dark outside is fun! That’s why the Germanic countries had a mid-Winter festival (called the Yule, where we get the whole “Yuletide Season” from) around the Winter Solstice to begin with, because they probably just didn’t want to walk off the nearest Alp because they had to hibernate for five months out of the year.

I know the horned helmets aren’t historically accurate, but they’re so much more fun!

So when these peoples were being Christianized, they found a Christian reason to celebrate in December – hey guys, let’s do Jesus’ birthday, and it worked. Now today, most people are considered “lucky” if they get Christmas Eve off in addition to Christmas Day, but back then they partied for twelve full days, or as one King’s directive when he was trying to integrate Christmas with his country’s Pagan traditions was to keep it going “until all the ale ran out”!

So, you’ve Christianized a nation and integrated your religious holiday with their traditional festival. But  what do you do with the characters that existed in their mythology?  Turn them into Christmas Monsters, of course, and use them to threaten children who are badly behaved. Genius!

After years in the shadows, we all know and love Krampus now (I mean he even has his own movie!) And the modern genius move was updating the tradition of Christmas monsters to something cute and seemingly harmless, the Elf on a Shelf, who won’t harm the children, but sits on the mantle all Holiday season with a mischievous smile and a watchful eye. Well, back in the old days, they used to have little  Holiday friends like the Elf on the Shelf too, but they weren’t quite so cute…

Look at me, I’m a billion dollar child control industry!

1. Père Fouettard

christmas monsters - Père Fouettard
Look closely, those are screaming children in the sack on his back. Happy Holidays!

This guy’s name in English translates to “Father Whipper” and he likes to terrify children in the North and East of France. The legend is that he was a butcher who killed three little rich boys in order to rob them (or in a more gruesome version, he drugs them, slits their throats, chops up their bodies, and stews them in a barrel, ho ho ho) but St. Nicholas shows up, resurrects the boys and forces Father Whipper to be his assistant, punishing naughty children during Christmas by whipping them. One company even named a fragrance after him that has “whip leather” as part of the scent, ummm…, sexy?

2. Frau Perchta

Christmas Monsters - Frau Perchta
Does this dress make me look fat?

This little lady enjoyed scaring the crap out of kids in Bavaria and Austria. Frau Perchta probably derives from a pagan goddess who made the snow, but the legend was that she would enter people’s homes during the Yuletide and would leave a small coin for the children if they were good, but if they were naughty she would slit open their bellies and fill them with garbageYeah, I’ll take coal instead. They also said that she had one big foot in the form of a goose’s foot, so she was supposed to be a shapeshifter as well…

3. Belsnickel

Belsnickel comes from the Rhineland in Germany and brings candy as well as beatings. He even came along to America with the Pennsylvania Dutch (who were German settlers, not from The Netherlands, the Dutch part comes from the German word for their own language, Deutsch) and Dwight plays him in an episode of The Office. 
He’s always raggedy and dirty and sometimes dresses up in women’s clothes (he is also known as The Christmas Woman, not really sure why they threw that in there) and shows up separately from St. Nicholas. The custom is that he comes in, throws candy down on the floor, and then hits the children on their backs with a switch as they run around grabbing it. Growing up in 19th Century Pennsylvania sounds like a real hoot!

4. Hans Trapp

Christmas Monsters - Hans Trapp
License and registration…

Hans Trapp is coming” was the phrase used to scare misbehaving children into cleaning up their act all over the Alsace-Lorraine region. He was said to be a greedy man who worshipped the Devil, was excommunicated by the Pope, and then went insane and developed a hunger for human flesh. He lays a trap for a kid and is about to devour him when God strikes him down with a thunderbolt.   He then accompanies St. Nick like Père Fouettard to deliver beatings to bad little Euro-boys and Euro-girls.
However, what makes this story extra fun is that it’s based on a real person. Hans Von Trotha was a German knight who had a feuded with a local abbot and ended up being excommunicated over politics. Because he was a tall man in real life (over 6’6) and the fact that he was exiled from the Church it was easy to spread rumors that he was a monster and eventually used as a bogeyman to frighten children (even though even after his excommunication, he didn’t go mad, he served as a diplomat in the French court.)

5. Mari Lwyd

Christmas Monsters - Mari Lwyd
Sugar cubes, bah! I’d rather eat brains!

The Mari Lwyd isn’t as much of a Christmas monster, as a Welsh tradition of young men running around singing and looking for free drinks. Wassail is a hot mulled alcoholic cider that is drunk in Winter and “wassailing” is like caroling, but you get free drinks at the end of it. So, it’s way better than caroling actually. What makes this wassailing ritual creepy is the fact that they dress up a horse’s skull (often with a little crown and Christmas ornaments for eyes) and someone runs around with it leading rowdy young men to sing in front of houses. This Christmas monster might not beat you, but he won’t stop singing at you until you give him a drink!

6. The Tomte

Christmas Monsters - The Tomten
Oh no, I’m not from Travelocity…

This little guy is actually kind of cute, like a garden gnome come to life. The Tomte is a Scandinavian creature who represents the spirit of the farm, the soul of the first farmer of the land. Back in the day, people would be buried in mounds on their farms and that’s where the Tomte was said to live. The Tomte cares for the livestock and helps with the fortune of the farm (as well as sometimes ruining the fortune of neighboring farms), but he is old fashioned, easily offended, and immensely strong (kind of like nature and the weather, the real enemy in a farmer’s life.)
If the farm is treated well, the Tomte might come to the front door and bring little presents for everyone on Christmas and is traditionally brought a porridge on Christmas night (he likes it with a little pat of butter on top). But if you forget the butter, the Tomato freaks out and  might kill one of your cows. Also, there was a legend that a maid once was bringing out porridge to the Tomte when she decided to eat it herself and our cute little buddy decided to beat her within inches of her life. Also, their bites were considered poisonous, so watch out for that.

7. Black Peter

Christmas Monsters - Black Peter
DO NOT WEAR THIS COSTUME AND PUT YOUR PICTURE ON FACEBOOK

This guy is celebrated in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, places where they might not have the ugly history of Blackface Minstelry that the United States does, but they certainly do have a complicated history of race relations (cough cough the slave trade and colonialism cough cough). Black Peter or Zwarte Piete is another one of Santa’s little helpers who doles out the beatings to little children. And traditionally in Christmas parades, Black Peter is a white person who colors their face black.
The history of the character is interesting. In their traditions, Saint Nicholas lives in Spain in the off-season (much closer to Turkey which was his original hangout when he actually was alive. ) Black Peter is supposed to be a Moor from Spain (think Othello)  who Sinterklaas brings along when he comes in every year and while in the beginning Black Peter  was the punisher who carried bad kids in a  bag back to Spain, now he’s the guy who throws out candy to the kids in the Christmas parade.
Santa all over Europe has a long tradition of helpers who like to punish children, but it looks like that Black Peter was introduced in 1850 in a children’s book. And if you look at the rest of Santa’s helpers, it’s guys like Father Whipper or Hans Trapp, people that are associated with eating children, so is that what the book is comparing the Moors of Spain too (there was a Muslim Conquest of Spain, so this is part of the clash of cultures)? But you can see where this representation might be problematic. You’re equating the Moors with the devil, which is a decidedly Medieval way of thinking, at least Krampus doesn’t have any living relatives…

8. The Icelandic Yule Cat

Christmas Monsters - Jólaköttur Icelandic Yule Cat
Iceland – the country that puts legendary child murderers on stamps!

How many Christmas monsters has Björk sang about? Only Jólakötturinn, baby, the Icelandic Yule Cat! He’s a giant ferocious cat that roams the Icelandic countryside looking for children who haven’t received any new clothes for Christmas, and when he finds them, he devours them. That seems like a cruel double whammy doesn’t it? Not only do you not get new clothes for Christmas, but you also get eaten alive!

But it’s not really, Iceland is cold at Christmas and it’s dark most of that season. Children who finished their wool weaving work would get new clothes for the holiday. Getting new clothes is important because it means that you won’t freeze to death in the Winter! And you’ll need those clothes to stay inside and hide from Jólakötturinn’s mistress…

9. Gryla

Christmas Monsters - Gryla
Oh, I’m sorry, how rude of me… I should have saved some naughty child for you!

Yeah, now we’re talking. Gryla is a straight up Scandinavian nightmare – a giantess who lives in a cave in Iceland’s volcanic lava fields and only comes out to find ingredients for her favorite food, which is a stew of naughty children. She’s like Frau Pechta but hungrier and with a bigger family. She’s been married three times, so obviously a loser in love, but she must be good in bed, because she’s got plenty of children…

10. The Yule Lads

Christmas Monsters - Iceland Yule Lads
We’re like the seven dwarfs except pervy and our mother eats children. Merry Christmas!

Gryla’s sons, The Thirteen Yule Lads, are more mischievous and less cruel than their mother (they just scare kids, they don’t eat them), but you still don’t want them in your house, even if they’re dressed like Santa Claus. One of them comes every night of the Twelve Days of Christmas and they’ve got names like Spoon-Licker, Sausage-Swiper, and Window-Peeper(!), so I think you can guess the kinds of activities that they like to engage in. They mostly just steal and play pranks and in modern times, our dollied up like our St. Nick, and leave little treats for well-behaved boys and girls.
But that’s just the modern version because Iceland has a long tradition of hidden people – creatures who live close to use but in a different plane of existence. Magnús Skarphéðinsson, who is the headmaster of Iceland’s Elf School, says “I have met more than 800 Icelanders that have seen elves, and 4 or 5 that have seen Yule Lads. They were old fashioned dressed, poor, a little dirty, a little rude and hungry, trying to get food.” So, take that with however many grains of salt as you like, but we’re going to have to go in deeper on Iceland in an episode because any country with an Elf School requires further investigation.
So, the next time you’re thinking about putting up an Elf on the Shelf, maybe you should think about a little Christmas Yule Cat, horse skull, or a framed picture of Père Fouettard with a bag full of screaming children – it’s cheaper and if you think the prospect of no presents scares kids straight, watch what happens when you tell them their intestines are going to be replaced with garbage!

Featured Song:  Sunspot‘s version of “Santa Baby

Santa Baby, slip a sable under the tree, For me.
been an awful good girl, Santa baby,
so hurry down the chimney tonight.Santa baby, a ’54 convertible too,
Light blue.
I’ll wait up for you dear,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.Think of all the fun I’ve missed,
Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed,
Next year I could be just as good,
If you’ll check off my Christmas list,
Come and trim my Christmas tree,
With some decorations bought at Tiffany’s,
I really do believe in you,
Let’s see if you believe in me,

Santa baby, I wanna yacht,
And really that’s not a lot,
Been an angel all year,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

Santa honey, there’s one thing I really do need,
The deed
To a platinum mine,
Santa honey, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

Think of all the fun I’ve missed,
Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed,
Next year I could be just as good,
If you’ll check off my Christmas list,
Come and trim my Christmas tree,
With some decorations bought at Tiffany’s,
I really do believe in you,
Let’s see if you believe in me,

Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing,
A ring.
I don’t mean on the phone,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight,
Hurry down the chimney tonight.

17 – Holiday Hauntings: Christmas Ghost Stories

If it’s the most wonderful time of the year, why are we sharing scary haunted tales? Explore the history of the tradition of telling spooky Christmas ghost stories!

More links on Christmas Ghost Stories:

Hypnogoria article on “The Origins of Ghost Stories at Christmas”

Deseret News, “Telling Ghost Stories is a lost tradition on Christmas Eve”

The Conversation, “Why ghosts haunt England at Christmas but steer clear of America”

Bill Petro, “History of a Christmas Carol: A ghost story of Christmas”

Featured Song: Next Plane (Welcome Home)

There’s dust in my bunk
and no snow upon on the ground,
it’s 110 outside and I wake up at every little sound.
I’m sick of being afraid, I’m tired of the bad dreams,
I won’t watch my son grow up on a computer screen.

I’ve seen too many ghosts of Christmas Past,
I’ve seen too many ghosts at all.

I know the fireplace was cold,
while I was being GI Joe,
and I’m sorry you poured your Christmas wine alone.
But I won’t miss another one,
And this year I’ll put down my gun,
This Christmas I’m on the next plane home.

There’s a table waiting for me,
and they’re playing my favorite song,
There’s a girl that’s waiting for me,
and she’s waited for too long.
But too many friends have gone,
and I’ve read too many tags,
There’s too many people I love,
coming back beneath a flag.

I’ve seen too many ghosts of Christmas Past,
I’ve seen too many ghosts at all.

I know the fireplace was cold,
while I was being GI Joe,
and I’m sorry you poured your Christmas wine alone.
But I won’t miss another one,
And this year I’ll put down my gun,
This Christmas I’m on the next plane home.
This Christmas I’m on the next plane home.