One of the things that you can count on my family to do is to tell at least one good ghost story at our Christmas gathering. Of course, the stories they told were all true ( cough cough ) but they were fun to listen to and they were even more fun to tell.

During the winter I read and write more ghost stories then I do during Halloween ( which is a lot ) but there is something about those cold dark nights and gray cool days that I find inspirational and I really get into the Spirit of  the season and it shows in my writing.

Here are some articles about the tradition of telling Ghost stories during the Christmas season, if you’re not familiar with the tradition you will find this background info very interesting:

 

From the article ” Why Do People Tell  Ghost Stories At Christmas“

Though to modern eyes, Halloween might be a more appropriate holiday for ghosts, Christmas makes sense. As Dickens wrote, the ghosts of Christmas are really the past, present and future, swirling around us in the dead of the year. They’re a reminder that we’re all haunted, all the time, by good ghosts and bad, and that they all have something to tell us. 

From The Article: Ghost Stories of Christmas: A chilling Victorian tradition

Gathering around a fire to share ghost stories was a beloved Christmas tradition in the late 1800s into the early 1900s.

 Victorians also sent bizarre Christmas cards with morbidly humorous designs featuring murderous frogs and anthropomorphic insects.

 Historically, December 25th has a close link to pre-Christian solstice festivals that viewed mid-winter as a time when light dies and the veil between the world of the living and dead is most thin.

From The Article: A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories

 “Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.”