By Stephen DeAngelis
Charles Dickens’ story “A Christmas Carol” has become a Christmas tradition. Families often gather around the television to watch their favorite film version of the tale or head to the theater to watch a live performance. Although the storyline features ghosts of the past, present, and future, I daresay that most people don’t think of it as a ghost story per se. Nevertheless, its origins are founded in the Victorian Era’s fondness for Christmas ghost stories. Journalist Elizabeth Yuko explains, “Though ghost stories may seem out of place in present-day American holiday celebrations, they were once a Christmas staple, reaching their peak of popularity in Victorian England.”[1] Yuko speculates that the telling of scary stories at year’s end is connected to the length of winter nights. “Spooky storytelling,” she writes, “gave people something to do during the long, dark evenings before electricity.”
England wasn’t the only place where tales were told that sent chills up the spine of listeners. Freelance writer Jennifer Billock reports that in parts of Europe stories were (and are) told of a frightening ghoul whose visage includes a mangled, deranged face with bloodshot eyes, a furry black body, and giant curled horns.[2] This half-goat, half-demon is known as Krampus. She adds, “Krampus himself historically comes around the night of December 5, tagging along with St. Nicholas. He visits houses all night with his saintly pal. While St. Nick is on hand to put candy in the shoes of good kids and birch twigs in the shoes of the bad, Krampus' particular specialty is punishing naughty children. Legend has it that throughout the Christmas season, misbehaved kids are beaten with birch branches or can disappear, stuffed into Krampus' sack and hauled off to his lair to be tortured or eaten.”
For a while, Christmas villains weren’t quite so bloodthirsty. Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” simply wanted to stop all the merrymaking brought on by the holidays. More recently, filmmakers have tried to revive the scary Christmas tale with movies like the 1997 cult movie “Jack Frost,” about a serial killer turned snowman. Or the earlier 1984 movie “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” a slasher film that featured a killer Santa Claus. The movie was actually pulled from some theaters because it was so controversial.
While those movies might not be to everyone’s taste, people continue to buy tickets to scary movies around the holidays. Author Kristian Wilson Colyard suggests we might be better served staying home Christmas Eve to, once again, regale one another with ghost stories. She writes, “There’s room on December 24 for a few spooky stories, no matter your religious affiliation. … We need to start telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve again.”[3] She recounts that, during Dickens’ time, 25 December, for many people, was just another work day and the telling of ghost stories on Christmas Eve had waned. Dickens wanted to revive both the celebration and the tradition. Scrooge represented all of the Industrial Age employers who made people work on the holiday. And Marley, Scrooge’s partner, was the first ghost to haunt him over his self-centered motives. Looking back on his own miserable existence, Marley told Scrooge, “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” That lesson is as true today as it was back in 1843.
According to Colyard, Dickens helped to achieve both of his ambitions — to revive Christmas and ghost stories. She explains, “Although the story of Ebenezer Scrooge contributes to the holiday’s boost in popularity during the Victorian period, it didn’t singlehandedly save Christmas. But it did breathe new life into the centuries-old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. In fact, the tradition was so popular by the end of the 19th century that writer Jerome K. Jerome observed in 1891: ‘Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories…It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.’” Colyard suggests that people enjoy ghost stories, not simply for the suspense; rather, “the kinds of stories we choose to tell reflect our fears, hopes, dreams, and religious beliefs.” For an earlier piece, Colyard interviewed horror author and physician Dr. Steven Schlozman, who told her that horror was “about how we pull together, and do our best, and rise above our petty, racist or identity-borne impulses, and do what needs to be done in order to sort of get through the day.” Colyard adds, “A Christmastime message if I’ve ever heard one.”
An editorial piece for Harper’s Magazine by the late novelist William Dean Howells lamented the gradual loss of a connection between ghosts and Christmas. He wrote, “It was well once a year, if not oftener, to remind men by parable of the old, simple truths; to teach them that forgiveness, and charity, and the endeavor for life better and purer than each has lived, are the principles upon which alone the world holds together and gets forward. It was well for the comfortable and the refined to be put in mind of the savagery and suffering all round them, and to be taught, as Dickens was always teaching, that certain feelings which grace human nature, as tenderness for the sick and helpless, self-sacrifice and generosity, self-respect and manliness and womanliness, are the common heritage of the race, the direct gift of Heaven, shared equally by the rich and poor.”
When listening to ghost stories, the natural tendency is to want to huddle together, to hold on to a loved one, or to be with others. It’s little wonder that many people would like to see a revival of the tradition of telling ghost stories during the holidays. Whatever traditions you enjoy during the holidays, I hope they are filled with laughter and love — and maybe a few goosebumps as well.
Footnotes
[1] Elizabeth Yuko, “How Ghost Stories Became a Christmas Tradition in Victorian England,” History.com, 28 May 2025.
[2] Jennifer Billock, “The Origin of Krampus, Europe’s Evil Twist on Santa,” Smithsonian Magazine, 4 December 2015.
[3] Kristian Wilson Colyard, “Why We Used To Tell Ghost Stories On Christmas Eve (And Why We Should Restart The Tradition),” Book Riot, 16 December 2021.
[4] Colin Dickey, “A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories,” Smithsonian Magazine, 15 December 2017.
