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Dec 23, 2013 · Ghost stories -- besides providing a fantastic means of family bonding and entertainment for kids cooped up on frigid days -- offer ethical dilemmas, moral quandaries, and social criticisms that go hand in hand with the season of introspection, repentance, forgiveness, and resolutions.
- A Dark, Spooky Time of Year
- Effects of The Industrialization Revolution
- Stories Find A Wide-Ranging Audience
- The Charles Dickens Effect
- American Christmas Traditions: More Syrupy Than Spooky
- Traces of The Tradition
Like most longstanding cultural customs, the precise origin of telling ghost stories at the end of the year is unknown, largely because it began as an oral tradition without written records. But, according to Sara Cleto, a folklorist specializing in British literature and co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, the seaso...
It was in Victorian England that telling supernatural tales at the end of the year—specifically, during the Christmas season—went from an oral tradition to a timely trend. This was in part due to the development of the steam-powered printing press during the Industrial Revolutionthat made the written word more widely available. This gave Victorians...
Telling horror-filled holiday tales continued to be a family affair in England, even when they were read rather than recited. “We know from illustrations and diaries that whole families read these periodicals together,” Moore says. The popularity of Victorian Christmas ghost stories also transcended socioeconomic status, according to Moore. They we...
Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol has forever linked the British author with the holiday season, but his contributions to Christmas in Victorian England—including the tradition of telling and reading ghost stories—extend far beyond Jacob Marley’s visit to Scrooge. In fact, Cleto says that Dickens played a “huge part” in popularizing t...
Although countless trends made their way from England to America during the Victorian era, the telling of ghost stories during the Christmas season was not one that really caught on. A Christmas Carol was an immediate best-seller in the United States, but at the time of its publication, Dickens was arguably the most famous writer in the world, and ...
Other than A Christmas Carol, there is another piece of pop culture that reflects the Victorian Christmas tradition: a single line from a song written and released in 1963 by American musicians. First recorded by Andy Williams, the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” lists “scary ghost stories” as one of the highlights of the holiday se...
- Elizabeth Yuko
Dec 17, 2019 · So here are a few of our favorite Christmas-y ghost stories, some from the Victorian age, some from a bit after. We, like Dickens, believe that this can be a “witching time” for these kinds of tales, and we invite you to join us in just a bit of terror for the season…
Telling ghost stories on Christmas was a tradition for hundreds of years. Here, Marley's ghost surprises Ebenezer Scrooge in an illustration from the first edition of the classic tale....
- Aoife Hanna
- 'Oh Whistle & I'll Come To You My Lad' — M.R. James. M.R. James is arguably one of the best ever British writers of ghost stories. And, according to the BFI, this particular tale of his has undergone multiple film and TV adaptations — including a version from Jonathon Miller that went out at Christmas time in 1968.
- 'Dark Christmas' — Jeanette Winterson. A modern tale written by Jeanette Winterson for the Guardian, Dark Christmas is a truly glorious take on the classic genre.
- 'The Turn Of The Screw' — Henry James. Henry James' Christmas time classic was turned into a very successful drama for the BBC back in 2009 which starred Downton Abbey's own Lady Mary, Michelle Dockery.
- 'Dubliners: The Dead' — James Joyce. This short story, a part of The Dubliners, isn't technically meant to be a ghost story but there's no denying it's an impossibly spooky tale.
A Ghost Story for Christmas is a British supernatural anthology television series created by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Episodes take the form of short television films which air around Christmas, initially running annually on BBC1 from 1971–1978, with revivals airing sporadically between 2005–2013 and regularly since 2018.
Dec 16, 2021 · Here are some scary stories you might enjoy reading aloud, or to yourself at Christmas. The publisher Biblioasis has released several tiny books of individual Christmas ghost stories, illustrated by the cartoonist known as Seth, every year, since 2016, three of which are included below.
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