Christmas Ghost Stories

"There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago" - lyrics from It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

My wife volunteers her time one day a month by telling stories to school children. She does this as a member of Spellbinders, an organization dedicated to oral storytelling.

In October she was worried about telling Halloween stories that might be too scary for third graders but they said, "nah, we can handle it", and they did. They loved the scary stories. During her November visit the children asked for scary Thanksgiving stories but she didn't know any. So she called me up afterwards and asked me to find out if there were any scary Christmas stories available. My wife is not the only one asking this question. Check out the post by a "Good Morning Carolina" TV co-anchor who ponders why "Scary ghost stories" are mentioned in the Christmas song It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.

There is clearly a British tradition of Christmas ghosts. The English story, "A Christmas Carol", is filled with ghosts who scare Scrooge to a better life. There was a Dr Who episode that begins with Charles Dickens reciting "A Christmas Carol" and then seeing an actual ghost in the audience. The classic novel, A Turn of the Screw, begins at Christmastime and there is mention of telling ghost stories. In the 1970s the BBC aired ghost stories at Christmastime.

Karen Michelle Nutt explains that there is a connection between Christmas Ghost Stories and Celtic Spirits. December 21 is the longest night of the year and the second most haunted day (Halloween being #1). The Celtic Yuletide season originally represented the death and rebirth of the sun and became associated with death and spirits in general. In modern times the Catholic Church substituted Christmas Eve, Dec 24, for the Winter Solstice with Christ bring light to the world and ending darkness.

Bottom Line

Perhaps Tim Burton's, A Nightmare Before Christmas, is no so far off the mark? With stores celebrating Christmas now the day after Halloween, why not let some Halloween invade Christmastime?