Welcome to day two of the Green Knight Week here at White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings!    Today’s post is about the Green Knight and how he relates to the Ghost of Christmas Present in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.   I want to note that this topic is part of what inspired me to do this Green Knight theme week, as when I was thinking about how the two are linked, I realized just how many topics I could think of that would make great posts!

Now, the Green Knight and the Ghost of Christmas Present may not seem on the surface like they would have much in common, especially if you are not very familiar with both tales.   The Green Knight is the figure that appears in Arthur’s Court at the end of Christmas festivities, on New Year’s Eve one year.   He presented a challenge to the whole Court, a beheading game, that anyone who chose to take this challenge would have to have the same beheading returned to them in a year and a day.   This is how Gawain chose to take on the challenge, as he did not like the affront to Arthur’s rulership (as the Green Knight had been quite mocking to Arthur, and the challenge seemed most directed at the King himself).   As Gawain viewed himself as the most disposable of all the Knights of the Round Table, he believed it had to be him to take this challenge!   Of course, Gawain swiftly beheaded the Green Knight, assuming that the danger was over, but the Green Knight showed his magickal and Faery origins by picking up his head and declaring that Gawain must find him in a year’s time.

Gawain goes on to complete his task after the Questing adventure he found himself on from Samhain until Christmas Eve.   Gawain finally finds Sir Bertilak’s castle and learns that Sir Bertilak knew where the fabled Green Chapel (where he was to meet the Green Knight) was.   Of course, the time Gawain spent with Sir Bertilak was full of challenges that Gawain did not understand until after completing his task.    Gawain laid down his neck and allowed the Green Knight to strike him with his axe, but he only got a small knick of the blade on the back of his neck.    It was after this that Gawain learned the truth of his challenge: that Sir Bertilak himself was the Green Knight and had been enchanted by Morgan le Fay with Faery Glamour to challenge Gawain in this way!   

In the case of the Ghost of Christmas Present, he appears on Christmas Eve to challenge the protagonist of the story.    Instead of challenging a Knight to see his worth, the Ghost of Christmas Present arrived to challenge Scrooge to show him the worth of the Christmas Spirit, to prove that Scrooge could change his ways!   After all, the Ghost of Christmas Present is, in his most basic, the embodiment of the Christmas Spirit, which does embody the Wildness of Nature, as many holiday traditions have their origins in Nature Worship!   The Green Knight and the Ghost of Christmas Present do have a quite similar appearance in many ways in their descriptions.   The Green Knight is large and imposing, literally fully Green from head to toe, with even his horse being in this color, a living embodiment of the Wild Green Woodland!    The Ghost of Christmas Present is described as being of a giant stature and wearing a flowing Green robe edged in white fur, with a wreath of holly on his head.    Yet again, the Ghost of Christmas Present gives major vibes of being the embodiment of the Wild Green Woodland.   This similar appearance is amplified when we look at the artwork for the Green Knight in The Arthurian Tarot by John and Caitlin Matthews, as he looks very similar to the traditional depiction of the Ghost of Christmas Present there, but more on that in tomorrow’s post!

In both cases, the Ghost and the Knight are challenging the protagonist of the tale to ultimately help them gain a better understanding of themselves, to learn lessons that will impact their futures, and to learn a reverence for Nature and Humanity.    While the Green Knight does so in a much more frightening way than the jovial Ghost of Christmas Present, the nature of the challenge has a very similar impact on the life of the protagonist.   Furthermore, it should be noted that even as jovial as the Ghost of Christmas Present is, he still does strike fear into Scrooge, as showing him how his ill deeds have impacted those around him in the present time did cause Scrooge much grief.   Of course, Scrooge needed the intervention of three spirits to learn his lesson, as he was more far gone in life than the young Gawain, but they both had the intervention of the figure who embodied the Wildness of Nature.   At the end of the day, a balance of playfulness and fear is present in both the Ghost and the Knight, which definitely shows the alignment between them and with Nature, as Nature can be both playful and fearsome in equal measure!   

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the similarities between the Green Knight and Dicken’s Ghost of Christmas Present.   Do you agree with my analysis?   Are there any other similarities that I did not mention?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!      

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the illustration of the Ghost of Christmas Present by John Leech from 1843.   I found the illustration on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Christmas_Present.

LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries 

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I will be doing my first-ever Herbal Tea Blending Class on December 29, 2024!   This is a live event hosted at the shop Phoenix Lane.   Here is the link to the event on Facebook if you are interested in learning from me in person: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19hU6vdFm3/

Further Reading

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by J.R.R. Tolkien
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens