In Act I scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, amidst the biting (December?) cold, Marcellus the palace guard exclaims in fright at the sudden appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost, declaring:

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
-Hamlet Act I.i.181-187

Part of what was so shocking to Marcellus was the sheer fact that the ghost could appear to them at all, during “that season…Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,” which was widely known as the time when “no spirit dares stir abroad.” This site had discussed before the lost tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas (of which Dicken’s A Christmas Carol is but the most famous example), and this bit of lore cited by Marcellus perhaps explains why the English were once so cavalier about sharing Christmas ghost stories: it was the one time of year when they believed the ghosts had the least ability to haunt them. Hence, something must be rotten indeed in the state of Denmark for a ghost to appear during the Christmas season.

The question as to whether Die Hard or Batman Returns are Christmas movies is long played out; far more intriguing to me is my growing suspicion that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a Christmas play; or at least, should be performed as one. (Given the high number of “alternative” and “post-modern” productions this play has been subject to over the decades, it at a bare minimum remains the one variation as yet un-tapped). I think it would really add to and flesh out the line-readings, were Prince Hamlet to cry out “Oh that this too, too sullied flesh would melt…” in front of a Christmas tree, maybe while handling an unopened gift (a feeling so many of us share during the Holidays).  I’d like to see holly strung about when the players perform their play within a play, contrasting the performative “jolliness” of the season with the “murder most foul” they re-enact.

I’d love to see Prince Hamlet contemplatively handle a Baby Jesus figurine from a small, nearby Nativity scene while he recites the famous “To be or not to be, that is the question” soliloquy, foregrounding the question of how desirable the promise of Eternal Life really is–or how much faith and stock we really put in the Christ Child if we are still so frightened of “the dread of something after death/The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns.”

And when Ophelia appears, I think it would greatly heighten the dramatic tension for there to be an ironic sprig of mistletoe overhead, when she tries to give him back some loving “remembrances of yours/That I have longèd long to redeliver” while he shouts back angrily “get thee to a nunnery!”  And I cannot think of a more hauntingly beautiful setting for Ophelia’s “doubtful” suicide than under a Christmas light display, silently flickering over the water. 

And when Act V ends in a giant pile of dead bodies as Horatio cries out in sorrow, “Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” there should be a large and stately Christmas tree looming over, with an angel atop in place of the star.

Oh yes, I think it would be absolutely lovely to see a Christmas production of Hamlet with full seasonal decorations, one that explicitly foregrounds the “scary ghost stories” of Christmases long, long ago–and could be again.