In 3 days I’ll post my 2022 Advent Ghosts 100-Word story. It probably won’t change your life or be a big deal to anyone but me.

But it’s a big deal for me.

Last year’s was, too.

Last year I wrote about a surreal drive I made to my hometown to try to rescue my father. Note for the rookies: Rescue drives are a bad idea, most of the time. Misguided.

This year, my story is inspired by a Christmas song that has always had a note of fear in it for me, and it was interesting to me to read about the song’s origin.

“O Holy Night” (original title: Cantique de Noël) is a well-known Christmas carol. Originally based on a French-language poem by poet Placide Cappeau, written in 1843, with the first line “Minuit, Chrétien, c’est l’heure solennelle” (Midnight, Christian, is the solemn hour) that composer Adolphe Adam set to music in 1847. The English version (with small changes to the initial melody) is by John Sullivan Dwight. The carol reflects on the birth of Jesus as humanity’s redemption.

As a writer myself, I’m ashamed to say that I don’t research song-writing the way I do other forms. But that is going to change.

This is a scary song. I respect that and I feel that every time I hear it or attempt to sing it.

So this will be a ghost story. It will be about fear, But it will also be about faith.

Because as much as this song scares me, because it does, it walks me into hope. I think this is how it goes, a journey of faith and connection to something beyond our understanding and outside of our power. You agree to take another step. You agree to not know. You trust.

And you agree to keep singing.