The Venetian Chronicles: Ghosts of Christmas past

The Venetian Chronicles: Ghosts of Christmas past
Yuuko: (The camera clicks on showing a living room, with large TV hanging over the fire place across from a couch and a series of plastic tubs and wooden crates directly to the right surrounding a pine tree. Where Connar is picking through a wooden box looking for an Ornament.) This is Yuuko Shirakawa, doing her super important holiday interview, with unremarkable physicists and remarkable boyfriend Connar Green.
Connar: (Looking annoyed) I don't suppose you have seen the hooks laying around, have you.
Yuuko: (handing Connar a pack of gray hooks) So are any of these magic?
Connar: Not in the literal sense of the word, I do have some that are magic, but they are under lock and key in the barn. Those will never see the light of day again.
Yuuko:What about in the metaphorical sense?
Connar: All of them are, these are collected over an immortal life span, some of them are well over 100 years old. The oldest I have is a silver plated candle holder from about 1890 maybe 1891, a German family gave that to me as a thank you for bringing their daughter back from Niflheim, after she had wandered through an old portal.
Yuuko: (Smiling) That's one of the things I love about you, I bet all of these boxes are full of stories like that one.
Connar: I know they are, (holding up a wooden witch) this one is from an Italian wood carver who I performed an exorcism on in 1904, (holding up a silver snowflake) this one is from a French jeweler who was also a contact for the Dragon in mainland Europe, he gave it to me as thanks for helping him escape the Templar inquisitors. (holding up an aged Ojibwe web charm) This one is a good one, a group of Vampires were attempting to force out the local Ojibwe by feeding on them so they could start logging in the nearby forest. The ensuing conflict awoke a hibernating wendigo, I had to work with their shaman and warriors to drive it back into its cave, before ambushing the vampires stagecoach while they were being relocated and staking each of them through the heart. The shaman gave this to me to “ease my hurting heart” as thanks for showing them how to deal with the vampires. Since I feel the lose of my first family so keenly during the holidays, I hang the spider charm on the tree each year.
Yuuko: (Opening one of the wooden crates) What about these?
Connar:(pausing to look at the crate)...those are some particularly special ones, those are from my “Children.”
Yuuko:...You mean Jon?
Connar: No...I wish I had some to remind me of Jon, but he was born and died before ornaments became a thing that anyone but the extremely wealthy could afford. These are from the different children whom I have helped or have helped me. (holding a faded knitted snowman)  here is one from Emma when she was a little girl, (rooting around in the box he picks up a metal belt buckle with a painting on the back) This one is from a boy named Charlie who helped me track down a blood mage who was working out of San Francisco, he almost didn't make it out of that one, the blood mage was doing that thing where they try to scare their victim before killing them and gave Tuk enough time to get the drop on him before I arrived. (pulling out a star made of bullets before sighing) This one was a gift from a child in Poland who acted as an informant for me during the war, between the two of us, we were responsible for the deaths of at least 150 Nazi officers, and another 75 Third Sunday agents. It would have been 76 but he was captured and then used him as bait to lure me out of hiding...I wasn't able to save him.
Yuuko:...Sorry I didn't mean to drag up bad memories, (Looking in the box) what about this little wolf, does it summon a familiar from the Carpathian mountains?
Connar: No I got that while I was on assignment in Yellowstone, I thought it would be a good souvenir and on that note, (pulling out an ornament shaped like a witch with plastic candies falling from the broom), I got the candy witch ornament I saw in Belfast (as he hangs it on the tree, he begins rooting around in another box) I also got this (holding up a Santa dressed as a police officer) so she could run from it.
Yuuko: (giggling) you ass, don't let my parents see that!
Connar: They Don't know about the candy witch.
Yuuko: Dad is suspicious and that usually means he knows.
Connar: He is not internet savvy enough to find the video on reddit, but just to be sure I will hang them on opposites sides of the tree.
Yuuko: Thank You sweety ...hey do you mind if I ask you a personal question.
Connar: (looking Concerned) sure what's up?
Yuuko: Would you mind telling me what Christmas was like with your first family?
Connar: (Sitting down on the couch and sighing as he tries to remember)  well there are somethings I think would be recognizable to most people, gifts, shopping and those kinds of things, aside from the weather though you wouldn't see many external indicators that it was christmas time, at least not until a few days before. There were no electric lights, and candles were expensive so people would primarily decorate with pine tree wreaths. Some of the fancier stores would put up ribbons or display handmade crafts but that was about it.
Yuuko: Was Christmas shopping a thing yet?
Connar: Yes and no, people went shopping for gifts, but it was something you usually did the day before Christmas, a week at most. The way Lilly and I use to do it is we would make a date of it. I’d hitch up the buggy and take us into the city, we would then stop at a shop and get Jons shopping out of the way and then we’d then go to Grafton Street and split up to get each others gifts and whoever else we needed to shop for.
Yuuko: Sounds familiar
Connar: Completely different experience though, wasn't near as many people. The mere idea of a shop being full of people shopping for gifts was unimaginable until the later part of the 19th century.
Yuuko: Did you decorate your home?
Connar: Of course, candles in the window, Evergreens on the hearth, just as my ancestors had done for centuries.
Yuuko: You didn't do a tree?
Connar: (Smiling) they were still a really new thing at the time, in Germany they had been around forever, but here, they were a novelty. Particularly among the wealthy since the English royal family was part German. We used to think of them the same way people currently think about the ‘elf on the shelf’, which I might add is on its way to becoming as beloved as the tree.
Yuuko: So did you ever get a chance to have a tree with your family?
Connar: (sighing) I did, I got 3 with them before the end. First one was the result of the only fight Lilly and I ever had. She got a letter from her sister in London, describing a tree they had at a ball she had attended, and Lilly thought this sounded like the most magical thing in the world, so she sought me out and told me about it. I can't recall exactly what I was working on at the time, but I think I was balancing the books for the farm, I remember I was stressed though, and she came in babbling about how she wanted to bring a tree into the house. The whole thing sounded so bizarre to me at the time that I cut her off half through her explanation and said no. Now Lilly being the strong woman she was, wouldn't take being told no without a good reason and I just told her she was being mad wanting to bring a tree into the house and cover it in candles. She said it's perfectly sensible, and to think how beautiful it would look, I was growing frustrated at this pointed and said,  “As your husband I forbid it,'' saying this all but guaranteed that it would be done, she stormed out of my study and I slammed the accounting book shut and then stormed off to the long hall for a pint (Something I swore I would never do in anger after seeing my father do it to many times), and I must have spent maybe 4 hours down there drinking and stewing in my own anger. When I finally decided to stumble home, I opened the door and their standing in the parlor was this 2 meter tall pine tree, covered in every damn candle in the house, I was so angry I was going to tear the whole thing down with my bare hands and then ...then I saw Jon, looking up at the tree, his eyes were filled with this wonder that I can't describe. I could see the reflection of the candles in his big blue eyes and then I saw Lilly looking at him with all the love in the world and I could tell she saw that same damn magic in his eyes that I did and I realized what a fool I had been. We had a tree every year after that. Every time I see a Christmas tree now, I swear that I can still see Jon looking up at it with that same look of wonder and awe, and I can still see Lilly looking at him transfixed by that spell that children cast when they are truly in awe of something and sometimes during the December nights when I miss them the most, I look at the tree and I can still feel the faintest traces of that same magic.
Yuuko: (a smile spreading across her face and a single tear in her eye) That was beautiful.
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