Ghost Stories at Christmas: Why We Tell Them and How to Revive the Tradition

The short answer: long nights and a fire

Christmas falls a few days after the winter solstice, when nights in the northern hemisphere are at their longest. Before electric light, that meant long evenings in a single warm room, with a fire for light and nothing to do but talk. Stories of the dead, of strange lights on the road and of houses with a history were the natural entertainment of those evenings.

The season also carries old ideas about the turning of the year. In many European traditions, the days between Christmas and Epiphany were a liminal time when the boundaries of the ordinary world seemed less fixed; our article on animals that talk at midnight on Christmas Eve follows one of those beliefs. Ghost stories fit that mood. They let people speak about death and loss in the middle of a feast, which is exactly when the absence of someone who used to be at the table is felt most.

From Shakespeare to Irving: an old winter habit

The connection is old enough to appear in Shakespeare. In The Winter's Tale, written around 1610 to 1611, the young prince Mamillius is asked for a story and answers that a sad tale's best for winter, and that he has one of sprites and goblins. The line only works if the audience already shared the idea that winter was the season for such tales.

Shakespeare also preserves the opposite belief. In Hamlet, from around 1600, Marcellus says that at the season of Christ's birth the rooster crows all night and no spirit dares to stir. So the tradition was never one simple idea: Christmas was both the time to tell of ghosts and, in another strand of folklore, the one night when they could not walk.

Two centuries later, the American writer Washington Irving brought the English Christmas to American readers. In the Christmas sketches of The Sketch Book, published in 1819 and 1820, he describes Christmas Eve at an old English country house, where the company talk of local superstitions and apparitions around the fire. Irving helped create the cozy, old-fashioned Christmas that Americans later adopted, ghost lore included.

Dickens and the Victorian Christmas ghost boom

The custom became an industry in Victorian Britain. Cheap printing and a growing reading public turned Christmas into a publishing season, and magazines released special Christmas numbers filled with stories meant to be read aloud at home. Ghosts were a staple.

Charles Dickens is the central figure. A Christmas Carol, published on December 19, 1843, is a ghost story from its first page: Marley's ghost, then the three spirits who show Scrooge his past, present and future. Dickens kept returning to the form. His Christmas book The Haunted Man appeared in 1848, and The Signal-Man, one of the most admired ghost stories in English, was part of the 1866 Christmas number of his magazine All the Year Round.

By 1891 the custom was so familiar that Jerome K. Jerome could open his collection Told After Supper by joking that whenever a handful of English-speaking people gather round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. The joke assumes every reader knows the scene.

Turn of the Screw, M. R. James and the fireside frame

Henry James used the custom as a frame. The Turn of the Screw, published in 1898, opens with guests gathered around the fire in an old house on Christmas Eve, trading strange tales, before one of them produces the manuscript that becomes the novella. James expected readers to recognize that setting instantly.

M. R. James, a medieval scholar at Cambridge, made it a ritual. From the 1890s he wrote ghost stories to read aloud to friends and students at Christmas, and published the first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, in 1904. His tales of cursed objects, old manuscripts and things glimpsed at the edge of a dark landscape set the style of the English ghost story for a century.

In 1971 the BBC began adapting them for television under the title A Ghost Story for Christmas, starting with The Stalls of Barchester. The series ran through the 1970s and has been revived several times since, which keeps the custom alive in Britain to this day.

Why Halloween took the ghosts in America

In the United States the Christmas ghost story faded during the twentieth century. The usual explanation is that Halloween, popularized in America from the late nineteenth century onward, absorbed the spooky side of the calendar, while Christmas became a more domestic, child-centered holiday focused on Santa Claus and gifts. The ghosts did not disappear; they changed dates.

One trace stayed in plain sight. The 1963 song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, made famous by Andy Williams, lists scary ghost stories among the pleasures of the season. Many listeners assume the line is a mistake. As Smithsonian Magazine pointed out in 2016, it is a leftover of the older tradition. In recent years readers, podcasters and small publishers in the US have started reviving the custom of a ghost story on Christmas Eve.

Christmas ghost stories versus Halloween ghost stories

The two kinds of ghost story feel different, and the difference explains why the Christmas version is worth reviving rather than just borrowing from October.

Christmas and Halloween ghost stories compared

	Christmas ghost story	Halloween ghost story
Setting	Home, fire, long night	Streets, parties, attractions
Classic form	Story read aloud	Costume, film, haunted house
Typical subject	The dead, the past, a house with a history	Monsters, witches, the uncanny
Mood	Melancholy, cozy dread	Fun fright
Key works	Dickens, Henry James, M. R. James	Irving's Sleepy Hollow, horror films

Classic Christmas ghost stories to read aloud

If you want to try the custom, start with stories that were written for it and that read well aloud in twenty to forty minutes. All of the following are old enough to be in the public domain in the US and easy to find in free editions.

Read-aloud classics for a Christmas ghost night

Story	Author, year	Why it works aloud
The Signal-Man	Charles Dickens, 1866	Short, tense, with a famous ending
A Christmas Carol, Stave One	Charles Dickens, 1843	Marley's ghost in one sitting
Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad	M. R. James, 1904	A classic of slow dread
Lost Hearts	M. R. James, 1904	Short, eerie, set in a country house
The Turn of the Screw, opening chapters	Henry James, 1898	The Christmas Eve frame itself

Quiz: which Christmas ghost story should you read first?

Four questions, one recommendation. There is no wrong answer.

Voices from practice

People who revive the custom often describe it as the calmest evening of the holidays: one story, a few candles, nobody looking at a phone.

Hosts commonly report that older relatives respond with their own family stories, about a house, a dream or a relative, once the formal story is over.

Many readers say the Christmas ghost story makes room to talk about people who have died, without turning the evening into a memorial.

What we don't promise

We do not promise that ghosts are real, that spirits are more active at Christmas or that a candle-lit story night will contact anyone. There is no scientific evidence for any of that. What the custom offers is documented and simple: a shared story, a long night made sociable, and a gentle way to remember people who are no longer at the table. If ghost stories distress someone in your household, especially children or anyone who is grieving, let them choose a different story or skip it.

Practically: how to work with this

1. Pick the night. Christmas Eve is traditional; any long December evening works.
2. Choose a reader. One confident reader, or pass the book between chapters.
3. Light candles safely. Never leave them unattended, keep them 12 inches from anything that can burn and put them out before bed, as the National Fire Protection Association advises.
4. End with remembrance. If you like, light one candle for someone who is missing; our article on the candle in the window explains that custom.
5. Go further if you want. For a more formal evening of remembrance, our guide to hosting a dumb supper describes a silent meal for the dead.

More in ritual candles and evening ritual.

Frequently asked questions

Why are ghost stories told at Christmas?

Because Christmas falls in the longest nights of the year, when families gathered around the fire and told stories. The custom is recorded in English literature from Shakespeare to the Victorians.

Why does a Christmas song mention scary ghost stories?

The 1963 song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year refers to the older custom of telling ghost stories at Christmas, which was common in Victorian Britain and faded in the US.

Is A Christmas Carol a ghost story?

Yes. Charles Dickens published it on December 19, 1843, and it is built around Marley's ghost and three Christmas spirits.

What is the best ghost story to read on Christmas Eve?

Dickens's The Signal-Man and M. R. James's Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad are classics that read aloud well in under forty minutes.

Why don't Americans tell ghost stories at Christmas anymore?

The usual explanation is that Halloween took over the spooky side of the calendar in the twentieth century, while Christmas became focused on family, children and gifts.

Are spirits more active at Christmas?

There is no evidence for that. Folklore even disagrees: Shakespeare's Hamlet records the belief that no spirit dares stir at Christmas.

Sources & further reading

• William Shakespeare. Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, c. 1600; The Winter's Tale, Act 2, Scene 1, c. 1610–1611. Folger Shakespeare Library editions.
• Washington Irving. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. 1819–1820.
• Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol. Chapman & Hall, 1843; The Signal-Man, in Mugby Junction, All the Year Round Christmas number, 1866.
• Jerome K. Jerome. Told After Supper. Leadenhall Press, 1891.
• Henry James. The Turn of the Screw. 1898.
• M. R. James. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Edward Arnold, 1904.
• Smithsonian Magazine. Why Do People Tell Ghost Stories on Christmas? December 2016.
• National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Candle safety tips. nfpa.org, accessed 2026.