Towards the end of each year, with the fireplaces lit and hot chocolate brewed, Americans have a tradition of revisiting their favorite classic holiday books, movies, and songs. And although ghost stories may seem out of place in today’s American holiday celebrations, they were once a Christmas staple, reaching their peak of popularity in Victorian England.
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A dark and scary time of the year
Like most long-standing cultural customs, the precise origin of year-end ghost storytelling is unknown, largely because it began as an oral tradition with no 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 season around the winter solstice has been a time of transition and change. “For a long, long, long time, [the season] has caused oral histories about scary things in many countries and cultures around the world, ”she said.
Plus, the spooky storytelling gave people something to do on the long, dark evenings before the electricity. “The long winter nights forced people to stop work early and they spent their leisure hours huddled by the fire,” says Tara Moore, assistant professor of English at Elizabethtown College, author of Victorian Christmas Print, and editor of Valancourt’s Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories. “Plus, you didn’t have to be literate to tell the story of the local ghosts.”
Effects of the industrialization revolution
It was in Victorian England that telling supernatural tales at the end of the year, especially during the Christmas season, went from an oral tradition to a current trend. This was in part due to the development of steam printing during the Industrial Revolution which made writing more widely available.
This gave the Victorians the opportunity to market and commodify existing oral ghost stories, turning them into a version they could sell. “Higher literacy rates, lower printing costs, and more periodicals meant publishers had to fill out pages,” says Moore. “Back around Christmas time, they thought they could convert the old tradition of storytelling into a print version. ”
Thomas Bensley’s printing press. (Credit: SSPL / Getty Images)
People who moved from their towns and villages to the big cities always wanted to access the supernatural sagas they had heard around the fireplace growing up. Luckily, Victorian writers like Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, and Arthur Conan Doyle worked throughout the fall to whip up these stories and get them ready to print in time for Christmas, said Moore.
Industrialization not only provided tools for spreading scary stories, but the uncertainty at the time also fueled interest in the genre, says Brittany Warman, a folklorist specializing in Gothic literature and co-founder of the Carterhaugh school of folklore and fantasy. The interest was motivated, she says, by “the rise of industrialization, the rise of science, and the impending fall of Victorian Britain as a superpower.” All of these things were on people’s minds and made the world a little darker [and] a little more frightening.
Stories Find a large audience
Telling horror-filled holiday tales continued to be a family affair in England, even when read rather than recited. “We know from the illustrations and diaries that entire families read these periodicals together,” says Moore.
The popularity of Victorian Christmas ghost stories also transcended socioeconomic status, according to Moore. They were available to read everywhere, from inexpensive publications to expensive Christmas directories that middle-class ladies would flaunt on their coffee tables.
Their large audience was reflected in the stories themselves, which sometimes centered around working class figures, and other times took place in haunted mansions. “These upper-class executives were meant to invite readers of all classes to an idealized, upscale Christmas, the type of today’s fans of Downton abbey always enjoy as entertainment, ”adds Moore.
The Charles Dickens effect
Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past hover above the moonlit city. From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dicken.
David Rhéaume / Alamy Stock Photo
Charles Dickens’ 1843 short story A Christmas Carol has always linked the British author to the holiday season, but his contributions to Christmas in Victorian England, including the tradition of telling and reading ghost stories, extend far beyond Jacob’s visit Marley to Scrooge.
In fact, Cleto says Dickens played a “huge role” in popularizing the genre in England. “He wrote a bunch of different Christmas short stories, several of which involved ghosts, in particular,” she says, “then he started editing more and more other people’s Christmas ghost stories, and to integrate them into the magazines he already edited. And it just took like wildfire.
Dickens also helped shape Christmas literature in general, Moore says, formalizing expectations on themes like forgiveness and reunion during the holiday season.
American Christmas traditions: more syrupy than scary
While countless trends made their way from England to America during the Victorian era, the ghost storytelling during the Christmas season didn’t really catch on. A Christmas Carol was an immediate bestseller in the United States, but at the time of its publication Dickens was arguably the world’s most famous and already very popular writer. The success of the news in America probably had more to do with Dickens ‘existing (massive) fan base than with Americans’ interest in incorporating the supernatural into Christmas. “American Christmas scenes and stories tended to be syrupy,” says Moore.
There were a few American writers of the day “trying to incorporate Victorian-style Christmas ghost stories into American culture,” Warman says, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. Washington Irving made a similar and earlier attempt, slipping the supernatural into Christmas-themed short stories published in 1819 and 1820.
Warman hypothesizes that America’s reluctance to embrace the tradition of Christmas ghost stories was related, at least in part, to the country’s attitude toward things like magic and superstitions.
“In America, we generally had some resistance to the supernatural in a way that European countries didn’t,” she explains. “When you came to America, you came with a fresh start. You came with a secular mindset and the idea that you were leaving the past behind. And some of those frightening superstitions were considered to be a thing of the past. “
Another reason why spooky stories never took off as a Christmas tradition in the United States is because it has become more firmly established as a Halloween tradition, thanks to Irish and Scottish immigrants. “It really had an impact on the culture here, because they brought with them a concept similar to Halloween, and that became, for America, the ghost age,” Warman explains.
Traces of Tradition
Other than A Christmas Carol, there is another element of pop culture that reflects the tradition of the Victorian Christmas: 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 Year” lists “Spooky Ghost Stories” as one of the highlights of the holiday season.
While it’s not clear why the song’s writers (Edward Pola and George Wyle) included the lore, Cleto says it’s possible the lyrics are a reference to Dickens. A Christmas Carol. “It’s only one text,” she notes, “but it’s a big deal here in the US and UK, and that’s about all Americans know. on Christmas ghost stories in isolation. “
