What was light one instant, at another time was dark. It was a strange figure -- like a child: yet not so like a child. The figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness. "Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?” It put out its hand as it spoke. "Rise! and walk with me. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
The government of Iraq declared Christmas an official holiday for the first time in 2008, but Iraqi Christians celebrated it quietly and sombrely. Families would attend church, but they would not put up Christmas trees or host happy gatherings.
Iraqi Christians then cancelled Christmas festivities across the country in 2010, as Al Qaeda insurgents threatened attacks on the Iraqi Christian community if they were to celebrate the annual holiday, to mark the birth of Jesus Christ.
In the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, in Basra and in the capital Baghdad, all did not put up decorations or hold evening Mass. The Church even urged worshippers to refrain from decorating their homes and an appearance from Baba Noel - Santa Claus - was also called off.
"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me." He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, which in some strange way, were fragments of all the faces it had shown him.
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