While Americans today associate the holidays with classic books, movies, and songs, ghost stories were once a Christmas staple, peaking in popularity during the Victorian era. The custom began as an oral tradition, thriving during the long, dark winter nights when families gathered around fireplaces. The Industrial Revolution, with its steam-powered printing press, transformed these oral tales into widely available printed stories, commercializing the tradition. Authors like Eliza Lynn Linton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Scott, and Emily Arnold contributed to the genre, making ghost stories accessible to both urban and rural audiences.
Victorian Christmas ghost stories appealed to a broad audience, crossing socioeconomic boundaries and featuring both working-class and upper-class settings. Charles Dickens played a significant role in popularizing the genre, especially with A Christmas Carol, which became synonymous with Christmas and helped formalize themes of forgiveness and reunion in holiday literature.
While many Victorian trends crossed from England to America, telling ghost stories at Christmas didn’t become popular in the U.S. Although A Christmas Carol sold well in America, this was due more to Dickens’ fame than an American interest in supernatural holiday tales. While a few American authors were injecting the supernatural into Christmas stories, the general preference for holiday tales remained more sentimental than spooky.
American resistance to supernatural themes carried on for decades, and by the time attitudes loosened up, Halloween was on the rise, taking precedence as the time for ghost stories in America. Still, the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas has never been forgotten and has even enjoyed a resurgence in recent years.
On December 12th, Haunts of Richmond will help this tradition carry on, as we share a selection of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories at a Haunted Dinner at Patrick Henry Pub and Grille. In a building that appropriately enough dates back to the Victorian Era itself. So don your cloak and join us for a meal and spooky tales this Christmas season.
