Probably one of our best-known holiday stories is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens… And it’s a ghost story.

Everyone knows about miserly, old Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghosts who visit him on Christmas Eve: the ghost of Christmas Past, the ghost of Christmas Present, and the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. But why ghosts? And why Christmas ghosts?

Christmas Ghost Stories Have a Long History

Interestingly, in 1843 when Dickens wrote our favorite Christmas story, he wasn’t doing anything unusual by telling a ghostly tale at Christmas. Mid-winter spooky stories had been a long tradition in Europe. And they were extremely popular in Victorian England. But where did the ghosts come from and how did they become associated with Christmas?

Solstice, Yule and Christmas Ghosts

It seems that supernatural visitations were associated with mid-winter even before there was a holiday called Christmas. In Europe, during the pre-Christian era, there were many pagan festivals around the time of the winter solstice.

The winter solstice is the longest and darkest night of the year, and it was a time of celebration and ritual for many cultures. Then in the 4^th century, the Christian church decided to celebrate Christmas on the 25^th December to coincide with these pagan solstice festivals. As Christianity spread, the pagan celebrations were just absorbed into Christmas.

Christmas overtook the Roman festival of Saturnalia and many of its traditions became Christmas traditions. Then, from the Germanic tribes of north-western Europe and Scandinavia, Christmas absorbed the Yule festival which took place at around the same time.

It appears that it was from Yule, that ghosts floated into Christmas. People believed that, during that time of year, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was at its thinnest. The Yule log was burned inside the house to keep it warm and bring luck – but also to keep those ghastly ghosts outside.

Christmas Ghost Stories of the Middle Ages

Ghosts continued to visit at Christmas time into the Middle Ages. Up until then, the stories had been oral, but in the Middle Ages some of them were written down.

One of the earliest is the Saga of the People of Floi, an Icelandic tale dated to the 11th century. In it a group of people gathered in a house for a lovely Christmas feast. Outside there are ghosts who are up to no good. They knock on the door and when someone goes out, they are abducted and killed by the gang of not-so-friendly goblins. Other Icelandic sagas of this era also set ghost stories at Christmas.

In the 14^th century we have the Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A Green Knight (who is a ghost) appears at the court of King Arthur for a friendly Christmas game. After Sir Gawain lops off his head. The Green Knight picks it up and rides away. Seeing this, King Arthur says, “Such cunning play well becomes the Christmas tide…”

In the 17th century we have Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1609-1611). In it Mamillius says, “A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.” To which Hermione responds, “Do your best to fright me with your sprites.”

Puritans Do Away With Christmas and Its Ghost Stories

But in 1642 when the Puritans took control of the government, they did their best to get rid of Christmas entirely. They didn’t like anything about it, and that included those “ungodly” ghost stories.

Victorians Bring Back the Ghosts

But the goblins and ghouls didn’t go away completely, they were just waiting in the shadows for the Victorians to invite them back. In 1837 Queen Victoria took the throne and the Victorian age began. It spawned the industrial revolution and was a boom time for so many technological advancements, and the important one for ghost stories was the printing press.

Printing Presses Publish Spooky Christmas Stories

New steam-powered printing presses made it possible to print quickly, easily, and in quantity. Periodical magazines and newspapers popped up everywhere, and they needed lots of content because the population was more literate than ever before.

So each December, the magazines and newspapers were filled with terrifying tales of the supernatural. Charles Dickens worked for several periodicals and many of his ghost stories were printed in them.

Gabriel Grub vs Ebenezer Scrooge

In 1843 when Dickens had the idea for his famous Christmas Carol, he wanted to highlight the plight of poor children. And what better medium to use than the traditional Christmas ghost story?

He had already written several ghost stories which influenced A Christmas Carol. In 1835 he had published The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton. In it, Gabriel Grub is a sexton (church caretaker and gravedigger) with a bad attitude. It’s Christmas time and everyone is jolly but him. He doesn’t use the word “humbug,” but he grumbles every time someone says, “Merry Christmas.”

On Christmas Eve he goes out to dig a grave and is visited by goblins who take him into the underworld and show him a poor but happy family with several children. The youngest one is on his death bed. Then his goblin guides take him to another place and show him the same family years later when the parents die. All this unsettles Grub and he wakes on Christmas day a changed man.

Does any of that sound familiar? Grub is similar to Scrooge and the family with a sick son sounds very much like the Cratchets and Tiny Tim.

Dickens wasn’t the only one writing Christmas ghost stories. The Victorian era was filled with them. In 1891, Jerome K. Jerome wrote “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.”

Dickens Gives the Ghosts a Purpose

If there were so many ghost stories, then why were most of them forgotten while A Christmas Carol is read and performed year after year?

Today we don’t really associate ghosts with Christmas, or if we do, we think of the three ghosts from Dickens famous tale. I think this might be because most of the spooky stories were told simply to give people a fright during the long, dark winter nights. But Dickens gave the ghosts a purpose – to teach a moral lesson. His three Christmas ghosts came from the other side to help Scrooge by converting him from his wicked ways and showing him how to become a better person.

In addition, Dickens’ little ghost story had a lot to do with changing Christmas and making it into the feel-good, family-centered holiday it is today. He helped establish the idea that Christmas was a season of goodwill and a time to help those less fortunate. And maybe those ghastly ghost stories without any moral just didn’t go with the new sentimental version of Christmas. So, to keep the new Christmas spirit, we swept the ghosts out of Christmas and over into Halloween where they can enjoy their own holiday and leave us in peace at Christmas.

What the Dickens!

Just a note about the expression used in the title. It doesn’t have anything to do with Charles Dickens. Shakespeare used it more than 200 years before Dickens was born. In his 1602 play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Page exclaims, “I cannot tell what the dickens his name is ….”

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