There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories
“There’ll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and caroling out in the snow. There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.” Just like in the Andy Williams’ song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” at one time a centuries old tradition was to tell scary ghost stories on Christmas Eve. This tradition was influenced by the pagan celebration of Yule, or the Winter Solstice, which was the longest and darkest night of the year when the seemingly never-ending darkness allowed the spirits of the dead to walk in the realm of the living.
Our Victorian ancestors may have seemed to be prim and proper, but they had an appetite for a good thriller that would put M. Night Shyamalan to shame. The telling of scary Christmas stories gained popularity in mid-19th century England and the British Isles, though it had roots over a thousand years deep. The very first holiday ghost story to be told on American soil came from Washington Irving in 1819, when Charles Dickens was just a lad of eight years. Irving’s book, Old Christmas from the Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. contained the following: “When I returned to the drawing-room, I found the company seated around the fire, listening to the parson, who was deeply ensconced in high-backed chair, the work of some cunning artificer of yore, which had been brought from the library for his particular accommodation. From this venerable piece of furniture, with which his shadowy figure and dark weazen face so admirably accorded, he was dealing forth such strange accounts of popular superstition and legends of the surrounding country.”
Another New York native, Frank L. Baum, of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fame, penned his own Christmas horror when he wrote Kidnapped Santa in 1904, in which Santa was taken prisoner by five demons in the caves surrounding Laughing Valley where Mr. and Mrs. Claus lived with their elves. HP Lovecraft offered “The Festival” to incite a little fear in the reader heart. Though the most famous of all Christmas ghost stories is by far A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the master of Christmas horror, Henry James, MR James and HG Wells also created tales of terror.
The market for such stories was not completely cornered by the English and Americans. Other cultures brought tales of Christmas creatures horrifying enough to scare any naughty child into good behavior in time for Santa’s arrival. The Germans had the Krampus which was half goat/half demon who appeared on the eve of St. Nicholas Day to carry away bad children in sack to later eat them. Not to be outdone, there was Frau Perchta, a Christmas witch, who sought out children who were naughty all year long to disembowel them. Not only did the immigrants bring Christmas ghost stories and not so festive monsters with them to America, they also introduced dark superstitions among the holiday traditions. According to a popular superstition, those born on Christmas Eve became ghosts every year on the night of their birth while they slept. In order to keep from becoming a ghost, the birthday “child” had to count the holes in a sieve from 11 o’clock on Christmas Eve until morning. Some of our most cherished traditions came from macabre beginnings. The church bells that toll on Christmas to joyously celebrate the birth of Christ originally rang out for centuries to remind Satan that the holiday symbolized the beginning of his end. The giving of Christmas gifts is believed to follow the story of the Wise Men giving baby Jesus their precious gifts. However, it has a darker origin. Dolls were given as gifts during the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, which was a Roman holiday that fell between December 17th and 23rd. The dolls were a depiction of the human sacrifices made by the Romans as payment to Saturn for a bountiful harvest. If you put tinsel on your Christmas tree, the idea came from Eastern European folklore about a spider that covered the tree of a poor widow’s family while they slept, bringing them good luck and fortune.
By the end of the 19th century, the Christmas Eve tradition was all but abandoned, its demise attributed to a few culprits. Samhain, the predecessor to Halloween, arrived in America from Scotland and Ireland. The focus of Samhain was the dead and the relationship with the living. As a result, the obsession with ghosts slowly migrated from the hearths of Christmas Eve to the end of October. The invention of the Christmas card and its mass production in 1875, as well as the growing commercialization of the holiday put the final nails in the coffin. The scary ghost stories once told on Christmas Eve were replaced with heartwarming tales of charity, family, peace and Hallmark Channel movies. So while you’re celebrating with Santa and his merry elves, I say bring back some Irving, Dickens and Poe. Merry Krampus to all and to all a fright-filled night!
