Our Christmas in 2010, Part 2

Zombie Claus came over for Christmas.

Well, kids, you may remember that last time I posted some pics of the spooky/kooky/altogether ooky friends' home I visited on Christmas. Let's continue the tour! (Click on the photos and enlarge them--there's so much "cool ghoul" detail.)

Here's the front parlor (I use this old term on purpose--as in "funeral parlor") as you look to the right:

Our gracious and ghoulish (g)hosts, Bill and Ariann.

I said to Bill and Ariann, "The Christmas decor in most people's homes today says 'Believe.' Yours says 'Beware!'"

Skulls make for a striking kitchen decor. These were placed near the bottles of poisons and acids.

There was an exchange of gifts. I got some skull-and-crossbones bling and monster books; Jane got some horror-related books, too. We gave them a "witch's garden" (a spookily-decorated terrarium) to grow plants mentioned in spell books, and the latest issue of Famous Monsters magazine.

Now let's look into the dining room--


We had a bountiful feast, although I noticed the joint of ham served looked a lot like a thigh from a "long pig" instead of a real oinker. It tasted like ham and looked like ham, but perhaps it was a roast. Chuck, perhaps.

The ale that we drank to keep us hale:

We talked about a lot of things during dinner, like the recent solar eclipse that occurred on the same day as the winter equinox. I was the only one among us who'd managed to see it, and said the moon that night looked to me like a pink pearl in the night sky.The fast-moving, very thin clouds high up in the sky that night made the pale orb appear to pulse.

Other odd things recently seen were a man who was a deep gray blue, a skin condition that comes from ingesting too much colloidial silver. (It results in argyria, whose only benefit is warding off werewolves and vampires.) We also talked about forgotten old Christmas traditions, such as telling ghost stories, or playing the game snapdragon, where raisins are placed in a wide shallow bowl and covered with brandy, which is set on fire. The object is to reach into the fire and grab the raisins, the winner was whoever got the most or was able to look like a dragon by blowing the burning vapor out after tossing the raisins into one's mouth.

Bill, Ariann, Jane and I gathered around the tv later to watch The Bells, a classic silent about murder, a ghost, a hypnotist and a nagging conscience, loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem. It was heartwarming.

Then we said our thanks and goodbyes to our generous friends, and went home. We felt the need to watch a religious film before the holiday was done, so of course we popped in The Exorcist. The perfect end to a perfect day.