The scene is set evocatively: “As fierce winter winds cut across the frozen landscape, a welcoming golden glow beckons from the windows of a venerable country mansion. In Christmas: A Ghostly Gathering, the gothy duo arrange and perform a wide variety of seasonal favorites and a few originals that work remarkably well as a soundtrack for Yuletide festivities, and as a satisfying expression of their ever-expanding musical and recording sophistication. In 2014 they branched out to perform live for the first time, bringing their thrilling musical show, Legacy of Shadows, to Cedar Point for its 18th annual HalloWeekends seasonal event. For almost two decades, Northeast Ohio-native composers Edward Douglas and Gavin Goszka have been known as Midnight Syndicate, creating symphonic, gothy soundtracks to real and imaginary horror films that have become a staple of haunted attractions, amusement parks, stores, and homes worldwide throughout the Halloween season. The continued popularity of A Christmas Carol and its many popular culture adaptations assures us that the Victorian Christmas ghost story tradition carries on, though in forms we might not always recognize as such.Īnd so to Midnight Syndicate’s new instant classic album, Christmas: A Ghostly Gathering, wherein the leading tunesmiths of Halloween bring their spooky sensibility to Christmastide. The most popular Christmas story of all - besides that of the birth of Christ, of course - is a Victorian ghost story that happens to have a happy ending, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. As a result, the telling of ghost stories was as integral to their holiday as boughs of holly, sleigh rides, St Nicholas, and presents. They also saw the icy chill and stillness of winter as analogous to death. The Victorians, who shaped our modern Christmas, sensed a deep connection between the eerie and the sacred.
Like its evil twin Halloween, Christmas is also about spirit intruding into the world of flesh, with Halloween shrouded in eerie darkness while Christmas is bathed in sacred light. The winter holiday season is layer upon layer of tradition and symbol drawn from disparate cultures over thousands of years, pagan and Christian, natural and supernatural, Yule and Christmas, Winter Solstice and the birth of Christ, with common themes of rebirth, renewal, reconnection, reckoning, and redemption.
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