We wish you a very haunted holiday!
Have you ever wondered why the Christmastime classic “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” includes the line “there’ll be scary ghost stories”?
These days, we’re more likely to share spooky tales at Halloween than at our end-of-year holiday gatherings. And yet, ghost stories were once a major part of the Christmas tradition.
We’re all for bringing back a dash of cozy creepiness to winter festivities, so we put together a history of telling ghost stories at Christmas celebrations. Come gather around the fire with us, won’t you? We promise it won’t be too scary!
The Ancient Tradition of Sharing Ghost Stories During Winter
The popularity of telling ghostly tales at Christmastime reached its peak in Victorian England, so named for Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901. Suffusing our winter days and nights with tales of the otherworldly, however, has a much longer history.
References to wintertime ghost stories can be found in the plays of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. End-of-year folklore traditions and ancient pagan festivals like Yule centered on venerating ancestral spirits and making offerings to ward off wicked forces. In fact, many cultures around the world associate the winter solstice with the cycle of death and rebirth, viewing the long nights of late December as a symbol for darkness and transformation in anticipation of spring’s return.
The winter solstice is also the time of year with the least daylight in the Northern Hemisphere. Long before electricity, families would gather around a fire and pass the long nights by telling stories — naturally, those tales took on a dark, spectral hue. The connection between death, darkness, transition, and storytelling led many cultures to gather together in winter and share ghost stories.
The Industrial Revolution Summons a New Ghostly Curiosity
The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain in the mid-1700s and continued through the Victorian era of the mid-1800s, triggered a literary boom: book printing costs shrank, production capacity grew, and literacy rates rose among the middle class.
Increased demand for reading material meant that writers and editors needed easy-to-produce content they could put out quickly. And it turned out that the emerging urban class still longed for the time-honored tradition of supernatural stories. Victorian writers like Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, and Arthur Conan Doyle were happy to oblige.
Indeed, the enduring popularity of ghost stories in oral storytelling meant that Victorian writers had a wealth of material to draw upon. Publishers and authors alike were more than happy to save time and money, moving quickly to publish the best ghost stories that would attract the largest audience.
Meanwhile, anxieties over rapid advancements in science and technology, combined with the Victorians’ fascination with death and the supernatural, led to the rise of spiritualist practices, including seances, spirit photography, and picnics in cemeteries.
Ghost stories at Christmastime, therefore, made the perfect match for the Victorian era, blending the spectral traditions of the past with the otherworldly desires and fears of the present.
Charles Dickens Elevates the Christmas Ghost Story to Haunting New Heights
“Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.”
You knew we’d arrive at this everlasting tale sooner or later!
Published in 1843, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is without question the most famous Christmas ghost story of the Victorian era. Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation from miserly to merry after being visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve possesses everything one could want in a Christmas ghost story: darkness and light, fear and festivities, death and transformation. At roughly 100 pages in length, the spirited holiday novella is the perfect tale to keep you and your loved ones enchanted by the fire on Christmas Eve.
But Dickens didn’t just write one of the most celebrated Christmas ghost stories of all time; he also helped to champion the Christmas ghost story within the publishing industry.
In fact, A Christmas Carol isn’t his only ghostly holiday tale — Dickens published four more after it! The author also worked as an editor at several magazines that regularly published ghost stories, so he included ghostly holiday-themed tales in their special Christmas editions. For instance, in Household Words, he published an issue titled “A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire” in 1852 that included narratives such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story,” which takes the form of a letter about supernatural events the narrator experienced long ago.
Dickens’s published work sparked a Christmastime ghost story craze in 19th-century England, inspiring other authors to join in on the popular holiday tradition. His legacy lives on in the themes we associate with Christmas stories today, including taking stock of one’s life, seeking out forgiveness, and reuniting with long-lost loved ones. In an article published by Smithsonian Magazine, author Colin Dickey posits that no other author has ever matched Dickens’s popularity and skill, and that subsequent attempts at Christmas ghost stories miss Dickens’s unique blend of “sentimental morality” that combines virtuous lessons with ghostly thrills.
Why Didn’t Ghost Stories Take Hold in American Christmas Traditions?
Unfortunately for Americans with a twin love of the merry and the macabre, holiday ghost stories never really took hold in the United States.
As with most folkloric traditions, ghost stories were rejected by the deeply religious English Puritans who colonized North America. American author Washington Irving did try to import and spread Christmastime traditions in the United States in the early 1800s, but it wasn’t until A Christmas Carol arrived in America in early 1844 that Christmas ghost stories gained any popularity here.
Even then, A Christmas Carol’s success in the States likely had more to do with Dickens’s standing as a renowned author than the story’s alluring mix of dark holiday magic. While English Victorians delighted in a touch of creepiness alongside their Christmas cheer, most Americans preferred their Christmas tales to be heartwarming and uplifting.
Other American literary greats, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James, did try to put a ghostly spin on Christmastime tales. Their efforts tended to lean heavily into the bleaker side of ghost stories and never really gained traction. For instance, Hawthorne’s “The Christmas Banquet” is a deeply unsettling story about a yearly Christmas dinner for the 10 most miserable people in the city and delves into the true nature of suffering. Fun.
As the decades went by, America’s increasingly dark and delightful spin on Halloween — which itself traces back to Scotch-Irish immigrant communities and the Gaelic harvest festival of Samhain — made Christmastime ghost stories redundant. We have our scary storytelling season in the United States, and it happens in October.
Credit where credit’s due: The Victorians were masters at conjuring the perfect Christmastime ghost story!
A Few Christmas Ghost Stories to Delight and Fright You This Holiday Season
Dying to resurrect this ghostly tradition at your own holiday gatherings? We’ve got a few spectral tales to get you started!
The eerily cozy stories below span the Victorian era to post-Victorian times. Many can be found online and are perfect to entertain and enthrall this December. Happy holidays!
Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: 1830s–1901
“Horror: A True Tale” by John Berwick Harwood (1861)
Victorian ghost stories often used oral or written storytelling as a framing device, with the narrator telling a supernatural tale to gathered holiday guests or writing a letter about a haunting or ghostly encounter. In an inventive twist, Harwood’s story is about a scary event that happens after the storytelling gathering has finished for the evening.
“The Ghost’s Summons” by Ada Buisson (1868)
Published after her death, Buisson’s short story recounts a doctor’s haunting experience witnessing a dying man’s final hours.
Post-Victorian-Era Ghost Stories: Early 1900s and Beyond
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by M. R. James (1904)
This eerie tale was originally published in James’s 1904 short story collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The author specifically viewed his ghost stories as Christmas Eve entertainments and liked to read them to close friends during Christmas. In this story, a young professor unearths an ancient bronze whistle that awakens an unrelenting presence.
“Between the Lights” by E. F. Benson (1912)
A classic British tale that marries ghosts with sentimentality, this story takes place in the light of day rather than after dark — on the day before Christmas — and delves into ideas of healing and reflection.
“Smee” by A. M. Burrage (1929)
Burrage’s tense, exciting story is set at a Christmas party, where revelers decide to play hide-and-seek. What starts out fun takes a terrifying turn when a mysterious figure appears during the game.