title: Christmas Spirits: Snowbound New York City reveals spirits of Twas the Night Before Christmas
author: Carolyn M. Stearns
description: Carolyn Stearns resides in rural Connecticut, her childhood home was an 18 th century house. That early indoctrination to historical research and life nurtured a lifelong love of historical reading. Now as a professional performance storyteller, historical stories are sought, told and created. This tale came from her search for a historical Christmas piece.
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  AUTHOR NOTE
  
  
  When I was a child, our whole family stayed up late on New
  
  
  Year’s Eve, and at the stroke of midnight, we all went onto the front porch
  and
  
  
  banged pots and pans. While staying up late was in itself a real treat,
  getting
  
  
  to make a huge racket in the middle of the night was fabulous. I never
  
  
  questioned why. It was fun and therefore good.
  
  
  It turns out we were driving away evil spirits, whether or
  
  
  not we knew it or believed in such things. I learned this while researching
  
  
  English Christmas customs, and since I enjoyed this event so much as a child,
  I
  
  
  put it in both stories of my current duet. In Under a
  
  
  Christmas Spell, the evil spirits are driven out of the house on New
  
  
  Year’s Eve, just as in my childhood. In Under a New
  
  
  Year’s Enchantment, the pots and pans (and a volley of gunfire) are
  
  
  part of the custom of wassailing the apple trees on Twelfth Night—giving
  thanks
  
  
  for the current crop and driving the evil spirits away so the trees will
  produc