An article in the Smithsonian Magazine by Colin Dickey (December 15th 2017), called A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories reminded us that especially in this day and age, we really only let the spooky things happen at Halloween. But if you know anything about whack Christmas traditions, you’ll know the very famous story by Charles Dickens titled A Christmas Carol. The story is about a man tormented by a series of ghosts the night before Christmas, and it belongs to the now mostly forgotten tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. And you can still see this now in songs like ““It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” with the lyric “there’ll be scary ghost stories.” For much of the 19th century, the holiday was very much associated with ghosts and the specters. But telling these stories was something the Puritans didn’t really love so the tradition died down in America. In honor of the early tradition, we will be reading you a story called Dark Christmas by Jeanette Winterson… hope you enjoy :)
Stay safe out there.
With love,
Saaniya and Maddie x
Sources:
https://carterhaughschool.com/10-spooky-ghost-stories-for-christmastime/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/24/christmas-ghost-stories-dark-jeanette-winterson
