Satanic Panic: Ghost’s Tobias Forge Loves Christmas

Bummer alert for those of you who might like to imagine that Tobias Forge, the man behind Ghost’s masked leader Papa Emeritus / Cardinal Copia, is as dark and twisted as the man he portrays on stage: the guy absolutely loves Christmas and getting into the spirit. Sorry, Satan worshippers!

In a recent chat with Kerrang!, Forge shared how he prefers to spend Christmas:

“I have two kids, and they were born on Christmas Eve, so Christmas is a big thing in our house. We’re not religious, but we do it really full-on. I actually really love Christmas. It’s very cosy, which is nice. I feel like I’ve earned it this year, too. We always have the TV blasting classic movies like Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments around Christmas time.”

Tobias continued by saying that he likes to let loose around the holidays which he can’t really do while on tour anymore, whatwith the level of success Ghost have achieved and the complexity of their stage show:

“I’m usually a little bit more festive when I’m at home and with my friends. I’ve really lessened my on-tour debauchery, and I really don’t party much at all on tour. So I make up for that when I’m with my wife and our friends.

“I’m too much of a control freak when I’m on tour. When I was a teenager and in my 20s, it was mayhem – but now I’m older, I get tired just thinking about hangovers! In old bands I was in, we used to play fucking slaughtered, so we’d do shitty shows. But Ghost can’t work like that. I want to be really good for the crowd who have paid money to see us. There’s very little wiggle room for shit like that.”

Forge plans to spend January working on a new Ghost song for an unspecified project before diving head first into the writing and recording process for the band’s next album, so he better enjoy the down-time while he can. We’ll all be here waiting when that surfaces at the end of 2020 or in early 2021.