The Ghost of Christmas Past
The holidays bring a sort of pensive haunting. Or at least I find them so. Starting somewhere around Thanksgiving and ending somewhat abruptly after the New Year, perhaps concluded with the very singing of Auld Lang Syne. It’s hard to really put one’s finger on what causes this effect, but it could very likely be the confluence of multiple stimuli that lead us to our inevitable yearly rendezvous with a Dickensian Ghost of Christmas Past. I want to say there’s a scientific reason for this, a psychological phenomenon that makes one disappear into the dusty halls of one’s memory, lift the wraithlike muslin dropcloths, and peer at the old portraits of what once was. Curiosity, and the internet, led me to the concept of Episodic Memory , not to be confused with Semantic Memory ; the former being a memory of events, the latter being a memory of facts. This would, presumably, be the difference in remembering falling off of one’s bicycle at the age of seven and knowing ...