🕯️

October has now taken its place upon the calendar, bringing with it long evenings, a crispness to the air and that most cosy sense of winter's approach. These days we associate spectral beauty with Halloween yet, centuries before carved pumpkins and sugared mischief, it was winter itself that truly belonged to the spirits.

Long before Dickens summoned the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future, our ancestors gathered by the fire in the year’s darkest weeks, when the sun sank low and the nights stretched endlessly on. To them, the winter solstice marked a threshold, a pause in time when the veil between the living and the dead grew thin and strange tales crept naturally into the glow of the hearth. This fragile moment between worlds, with the wind wailing outside in the dark, was easy to imagine otherworldly company just beyond the door.

And yet, a ghost story by candlelight was not told merely to frighten. It was a form of fellowship, a reason to huddle close, hearts warmed by firelight and shared imagination alike.  A well timed scare broke the long winter stillness, a spark in the darkness. It served as a reminder to listeners, in their laughter and shivers, that they were not alone. Indeed the telling of ghost stories at Christmas may seem an oddity to us now, but in its own time it was perfectly natural and a way of keeping the darkness at bay.  Let’s unwrap the history about why we tell ghostly tales at Christmas…

🌒 Rooted in winter solstice

The Christmas we celebrate today - glittering, bustling and delightfully indulgent, has its roots tied into something far older and earthier. In ages past, midwinter was a sacred, liminal season, a pagan time when the veil between the living and the dead grew thin. As the light diminished and darkness stretched long into the day, people turned instinctively to the comfort of firelight and storytelling as an antidote to the shadows.

The cold months were not only for feasting and remembrance, but also for tales that gave shape to unseen fears. Yule and the winter solstice were times to reflect on death, rebirth and the spirit world - a sacred pause between the fading year and the new one to be born once again. It was believed that during this threshold in time, spirits might wander freely passing through the veil between their world into ours.

By the medieval and early modern periods, Yule gatherings had become occasions for such tales. Not only of saints and miracles, but of ghosts and omens. As the wind howled beyond the hearth, what better stories to tell than those of the uncanny? These ghostly narratives offered both entertainment and comfort, reminding listeners during the darkness and silence of midwinter, that the light would inevitably return. Ghost stories then weren’t specifically about Christmas at first. They were part of a midwinter storytelling culture about mortality, fate and the supernatural. The ghost story was not an intrusion upon the season, it was its natural language.

INTERESTING TIT BITS:

~ IT'S A DATE!

Rooted in: Roman merriment - Saturnalia and Sol Invictus

It must be confessed that the precise date of our Saviour’s birth is nowhere to be found in the Good Book. Early Christians, perhaps sensibly, celebrated it when and where it best suited them - some in spring, others in January. It was not until the fourth century that the Church, in a fit of decisiveness, declared December the twenty-fifth to be the day. The choice, one suspects, was no accident conveniently coinciding with existing pagan midwinter festivals. Tis was already a lively time on the Roman calendar with Saturnalia (17–23 December) where a week of feasting, games and gift giving honoured Saturn, the god agriculture. Following on its heels was the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti,  the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun,” celebrating the sun’s return after the solstice. The people were merry, the lamps were lit and the wine was already flowing. Thus with some inspired practicality, the Church transformed the celebration of the sun’s rebirth into that of the Son’s birth. One might call it divine timing or, at the very least excellent scheduling!

~ HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS!

Rooted in: Ancient midwinter rites and a touch of Druidic prudence

Long before the tinsel garlands, households decorated their rooms with the winter’s steadfast greenery of holly, ivy and pine, symbols of life’s quiet endurance. The custom began with the pagans, who, around the winter solstice, brought evergreens indoors to honour nature’s spirits and invite blessings for the year to come.

The Christian household kept the habit but in true orderly fashion, established rules of propriety. Greenery might be brought in no sooner than Christmas Eve and was to be removed by Twelfth Night (January the fifth or sixth). To decorate too early was to risk waking mischievous spirits; to delay in removing it was thought equally imprudent for such spirits were poor guests, and inclined to linger. Thus the ritual came to mark not only superstition, but the very rhythm of the season itself - the turning from sacred quiet to everyday bustle once more.

~ TIS THE SEASON FOR LOVE!

Rooted in: Pagan charms and a perennial interest in matrimony

Midwinter, when the old year sighs into the new, has ever been considered a time when fate might be persuaded to part with a few of her secrets, particularly those concerning love. Such amusements were long the province of pagan custom, yet they survived most happily disguised as innocent diversions for the young and curious. During the Twelve Days of Christmas, one might find a hopeful young lady attempting any number of delightful enchantments such as:

❤️ Placing bay leaves beneath your pillow to dream of your future husband.
❤️ Peeling an apple in one unbroken strip and tossing it over her shoulder, trusting that it would fall in the shape of your future loves initial.
❤️ Most daring of all, gaze into a mirror by candlelight at midnight to catch a glimpse of the one destined for your heart.

🌒 The Victorian Revival

Centuries later when Christmas was polished and reimagined in the nineteenth century with its decorated trees, cards and family feasts, the Victorians turned the old habit of tales into a Christmas tradition. The Victorian enthusiasm for spiritualism, their Gothic fancy and yes, their fondness for a little seasonal spectacle all converged to make the Christmas ghost story a cherished tradition once more.

It became quite the thing to read aloud by the fire, particularly on Christmas Eve, when shadows flickered and imaginations could flourish. Now the season had become a time for family, reflection and plenty of candlelight, a little supernatural drama seemed entirely appropriate. The Victorians loved moral lessons wrapped in spookiness so ghost stories were the perfect diversion on a long winter night. Charles Dickens certainly thought so as he gave us A Christmas Carol in 1843 proudly subtitled A Ghost Story of Christmas - one cannot be more plainer than that!

His ghosts were there to terrify as much as to teach. His story came bearing messages of generosity, redemption and the perils of ignoring one’s conscience. After Dickens no proper periodical would dream of neglecting its own winter phantoms. Publications such as Household Words, The Strand and The Illustrated London News offered readers their annual chills from the pens of Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins and later M. R. James, ensuring that no figgy pudding was eaten without at least one spectral tale to accompany it. Echoing the winter fellowship from centuries ago, it became something of a ritual to gather around the hearth, a glass in hand and share a story that makes everyone edge a little closer to the light. With moral or emotional resolution, it was just right for the season of reflection and redemption with hearts united in the agreeable pleasure of being safely frightened.

🕰️ The Regency Connection

And what, one might ask, of the world of Miss Austen? In her day, there was not yet a formal tradition of Christmas ghostly tales, but the Gothic imagination was already thriving. Readers devoured tales of moonlit corridors, mysterious manuscripts and haunted castles with equal parts terror and delight. Miss Austen herself, ever the astute observer, captured the fashion perfectly in Northanger Abbey, where poor Catherine Morland trembles at shadows of her own invention and we, the readers, are invited to smile fondly at her for it.

Before Dickens made ghosts respectable company for Christmas dinner, the Regency imagination had already embraced this elegant dread. The late Georgian years saw a flourishing of Gothic novels by writers such as Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho) and Matthew Lewis (The Monk), whose pages overflowed with secret chambers, ominous abbeys and anxious heroines (yes I am still looking at you Catherine!).

Parlour room readings of the uncanny were a fashionable amusement, mixing refinement with a shiver. Thus, inspired by Regency gothic sensibility, the Victorians merely formalised something that had long been lurking in winter’s imagination and simply gave form to a love of the uncanny that had already been dancing through the pages of Regency fiction. For what is a winter evening after all, without a little harmless terror to make one feel charmingly brave?

🪶 Epilogue

Thus if you should catch a flicker out the corner of your eye this October, remember…it was never Halloween that first belonged to ghosts, but Christmas itself. Ghost stories are not the antithesis of Christmas, they are its shadow and a gentle reminder of mortality, empathy and transformation before the light returns.

To honour this tradition, The Meryton Chronicle has revived that custom once more with a ghostly tale about 'The Terrible Attics of Purvis Lodge' in our Christmas issue. Told in the spirit of candlelight, ink, and imagination, truly what could be more in the spirit of the season than that?