“On the top of the list was Christmas and all its festive trappings.” Prior to this, he writes, Christmas was celebrated in much the way that a modern Christmas is: lots of food and drink, decorations and singing (Cromwell famously banned Christmas carols). Cromwell, the Lord and Protector of England in the seventeenth century and a Puritan, was “on a mission to cleanse the nation of its most decadent excesses,” writes Clemency Burton-Hill for The Guardian. The decline of the holiday came courtesy of Oliver Cromwell. “The Industrial Revolution meant fewer days off for everyone, and Christmas was considered so unimportant that no one complained.” “In fact, for most people it was still a work day,” writes antiquarian bookseller Tavistock Books. As we’ve discussed before, by the time Charles Dickens came along with his Carol (1863), the tradition of Christmas was fading. This was particularly true in the days before TV. “These are the short days of the year, and a weird admixture of pagan habits and grand religiosity obtains.”īetween all that and the rum punch, well, a few tall tales are bound to come out. The darkest day of the year was seen by many as a time when the dead would have particularly good access to the living,” religious studies professor Justin Daniels told Omnia, a University of Pennsylvania blog.Īnd Christmas as a holiday has a cocktail of elements that invite ghosts, writes Colin Fleming for The Paris Review. was originally connected to the 'pagan' Winter Solstice celebration and the festival known as Yule. “Christmas as celebrated in Europe and the U.S.

But they’re packaged in the cozy trappings of the holiday. They’re about darker, older, more fundamental things: winter, death, rebirth, and the rapt connection between a teller and his or her audience.

Its origins have little to do with the kind of commercial Christmas we've celebrated since the Victorian age. At the edge of the year, it also makes sense to think about people and places that are no longer with us. When the night grows long and the year is growing to a close, it’s only natural that people feel an instinct to gather together. The tradition of holiday ghost stories goes much, much farther back-farther, perhaps, than Christmas itself. Here, Marley's ghost surprises Ebenezer Scrooge in an illustration from the first edition of the classic tale.Įbenezer Scrooge wasn’t the first fictional character to see ghosts around Christmas time.

Boo! Telling ghost stories on Christmas was a tradition for hundreds of years.

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