During the holiday season, it isn’t out of the ordinary for families to listen to Christmas music and tell the stories of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman. In the past, one tradition involved grimmer tales.
“I think that people think, ‘oh no, I wouldn’t do ghost stories, because that’s just not Christmassy.’ But it is. It actually is Christmassy,” said Marianne Noble, a professor of literature at American University.
At the Penn Social venue in D.C., Noble led a session of Profs and Pints, in which she shared the history of Christmas ghost stories and shared a few of her favorites.
Noble said the practice of gathering around a fire and telling ghost stories was first popular among the ancient Celts and Germans, and served as a way of entertainment during the long and dark winters.
“It’s really Charles Dickens who really invents the ghost story,” Noble said. “‘A Christmas Carol’ is, I would say, it’s the greatest Christmas ghost story there is.”
Dickens’ most famous Christmas story — which has been adapted by the likes of Mickey Mouse, the Muppets, Jim Carrey and much more — is a ghost story, about three ghosts who visit a rich, yet frugal Ebenezer Scrooge.
“There the lessons are of charity and benevolence towards your fellow man, particularly towards the poor,” Noble said.
Among those stories was “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The story of Sir Gawain’s strange quest includes accepting a challenge of decapitating a mysterious knight who promised to come back for Sir Gawain’s head in a year’s time.
This tale, Noble said, comes with a lesson in “chivalry and honesty.”
Christmastime ghost stories never really caught on in the United States, according to Noble, despite singer Andy Williams promising, “There’ll be scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories” in his 1963 hit “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”
D.C. resident Cosette Puckett attended the storytelling event and said there is a desire for this type of Yuletide storytelling, pointing out the popularity of Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“You think of Christmas and Halloween and ghost stories as anathema to each other, but really, there’s a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas,” Puckett said.
Jordan Griffen, of Arlington, said he attended the event because he wanted to learn more about other traditions.
“I just think it’s always fun to explore and push us a little bit outside of your comfort zone,” Griffen said.
For Peter Schmidt, founder of Profs and Pints, his hope with hosting the event is to enlighten people to the fact that not all stories during this season are jolly and bright.
“Everybody knows ‘A Christmas Carol,’ but what people don’t know is that is part of a rich tradition of ghost stories that were told during the holidays,” Schmidt said.
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