Twelve of the weirdest Christmas stories

R. Clifton Spargo is the author of the novel Beautiful Fools, The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (2013).

One entry on his list of the twelve weirdest stories of Christmas, as shared at The Huffington Post:

Alice Walker, “My Face to the Light: Thoughts About Christmas” (1988)

In reminiscences about her shifting ideas of Christmas, Walker recalls how growing up in a rural black Southern community she believed in Santa Claus as the only white man who was ever generous to blacks. Still, she wonders how many white people would welcome a “stealthily moving large black man” into their homes. Ultimately, she rejects Santa Claus as a symbol of her parents’ misguided worship of an “ideal white man,” in the effort to instill in their children belief in the miraculous changes that might occur in human nature. In a compromise with the holiday, Walker decides its true meaning pertains to the winter solstice, the day the sun begins to return to the northern hemisphere. A whisper of Jesus’s birthday remains, but absolutely no more jolly old white men shelling out false cheer.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue