The christmas carol “The most wonderful time of the year” has an odd line in it. “There’ll be scary ghost stories And tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.” Scary Ghost stories? On Christmas? Who thought of that? We’ve all heard of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” but isn’t that just a weird exception? Shouldn’t the ghost stories all be on Halloween?
Actually no. It’s not in vogue these days, but Christmas Ghost stories are an old English tradition. Did you know that Dickens wrote other Christmas ghost stories, including “The Haunted Man”? Here’s a link for you. http://charlesdickenspage.com/christmas_books.html
Why Ghost stories on Christmas? Well, Christmas was a time to gather with family around the hearth and back then there were no TV’s, so people would tell stories. We’d probably tell detective stories today, but back then Ghost stories were popular, so out came the Ghost stories at Christmas. They didn’t have to be “Christmas Ghost” stories, just good stories. But anyone in the writing business occasionally does holiday episodes. Sherlock Holmes has an excellent Christmas Detective story called “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.”
It’s in that tradition that I’ve included “A Gift for a Ghost” in my forthcoming collection “An Elvish Christmas and the Secret of Santa Claus.” It’s part of the “Tales of Tiberius” and it’s a Christmas episode in the fantasy series, as are all three of the stories in that book. It’s also a Christmas Ghost story and it was written to honor the long tradition of telling Ghost Stories at Christmas. This Christmas if you want to add a bit of tradition to your holiday, why not gather around the fireplace and read a few Ghost stories?