There’ll Be Scary Ghost Stories – In the Christmas Song, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the year, there is mention of ghost stories. So why tell ghost stories during Christmas?
There’ll Be Scary Ghost Stories
There’ll be scary ghost stories
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago
Why would we even want to talk about Ghost Stories during Christmas? Isn’t that usually done around Halloween?
When you think of Christmas and Ghost, you usually think of Scrooge in The Christmas Carol, first published in 1843. In which three Christmas Ghost visit Scrooge. Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Yet to Come).
Yet, that is not the ghost stories endowment.
“There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas — something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails…Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters.”
Jerome K. Jerome wrote in the 1891 preface to his collection of ghost stories
Some suggest an ancient, spiritual link with the Celts and their belief that the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thinnest at this time of year. Others say it was simply the Victorian passion for ghost stories that led to them being printed in the many Christmas annuals of the day.
According to boroughsofthedead.com
It was a Victorian England tradition but didn’t take in America. Americans didn’t seem to like that idea. That was partly due to the Puritans. Usually, these ghost stories were told over a fire on Christmas Eve with five to six English-speaking people around it.
It was done around winter because it was darker during the days.
They idea of telling ghost stories, didn’t come back until Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol. Where Dickens even claimed that “Christmas Eve was the witching time for Story-tellin.” in his 1854 book, “The Seven Poor Travellers”.
I never thought about it until we heard the song playing and was like wait … what? Ghost Stories?
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What a lovely read! I don’t know why more isn’t made of midwinter’s hauntedness: the darkness, the skeleton trees …