Unless I miss my guess I am probably not the only one who finds the modern winter holiday season to be a bit too much on the...hmmmm, how shall I put it, a bit too much on the terminally happy side. Don’t misunderstand me, I do enjoy this time of year. I am an atheist, but I was raised with Christmas and I still celebrate it (in a purely secular way) with my family. But in my own efforts to do so, I usually find myself struggling to counterbalance the sickly sweetness of it all with something a little more, shall we say, salty. I have a black wreath with a spider ornament. My tree has etched glass ornaments of the Christmas spider as well. I have painted holiday candles with the images of Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Future. And the music I listen too is mostly medieval Christmas music, Nox Arcana and Dark Noel. I made the ornaments and candles myself. Christmas (or other winter holiday) decorations with a darker, gothier feel to them are largely a do it yourself proposition. It’s hard to find anything commercially that doesn’t conform to the ooey gooey, holly jolly mold. But was Christmas always like this? Certainly a holiday as old as Christmas is must have more to it than we see today. Indeed it does! And if like me, you feel the need to season your holiday palate with something a little less sweet then read on! I am about to pass the salt.
Every December radio stations inundate listeners with warm, cheery familiar Christmas music. If there is ever an award given for the sweetest and happiest Christmas song of all time, one that should at least be in the running is a popular little ditty called “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." It was recorded in 1963 by the well known pop singer Andy Williams. In all the time since then it has never been off the air during the Christmas season. And why shouldn’t it be played? It’s so bright and festive! The lyrics describe all the delightful things we do during the season. They mention caroling, partying with friends, and glowing hearts. This is the song that tell us that Christmas is the “hap-happiest season of all.” It practically orders us to smile! But there is one verse to this little cavity causing holiday hit that is a bit of a contrast to the rest. And it has often been a source of confusion and a little controversy.
There’ll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for roasting
And caroling out in the snow.
There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories
Of Christmases long, long ago.
Er what? Stop the record for just a minute! Ghost stories? How did that get in there? Ghost stories are for Halloween aren’t they? Christmas stories are all about slay-bells, snowmen, tiny reindeer and elves who don’t fit in because they would rather be dentists. Who tells ghost stories at Christmas? We never did in my family. Well there is that story about Scrooge and the three ghosts, but that’s just a fluke right? And anyway it’s a moral about the “true meaning of Christmas” and how you should learn to be happy. It’s not really meant to be scary is it? I remember asking my parents about this when I heard the song as a kid. They had no real answer other than to say that the song lyric had probably just been thrown in for the sake of a ryme. But the truth is that these song lines, and the previously mentioned Charles Dickens story, do hearken back to Christmas traditions that are not so widely practiced anymore. In fact, ghost stories, and dark superstitions were once an integral part of the Yule time tradition.
Despite current appearances, the histories of the modern day holidays of Halloween and Christmas have more in common than one might think. The traditions of both originated as a sort of hybridizing of Christian holidays with the pagan beliefs. It was commonplace for the early Christian church to try to discourage pagan practices by usurping the ancient holidays and festivals of recent converts. Halloween now takes the place of the Celtic festival of Samhain, which was one of the four quarter days on medieval calendar. It marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the ‘darker half’ of the year. The winter solstice (the time associated with Christmas) is also one of these quarter days. But the solstice is darker still. It has the shortest duration of daylight and the longest night. The prevalence of darkness from the time of Samhain to the solstice was seen as the beginning of the dominance of spiritual darkness as well. At this time the border between the physical world and the domain of the spirits was considered to be at its thinnest. The Yule time, as it was known before it became Christmas, was a time of celebration and merry making. But it was just as much a time to fear and be weary of the spirit world.
The word “Yule” is Scandinavian in origin, as is the tradition of burning the Yule log. It was introduced to Britain, and other European countries, through a series of Viking invasions and colonization efforts. Never being ones to do anything on a small scale, the original Viking solstice time tradition called for the burning of an entire Yule tree as part of an annual tribute to Odin and to ward off the evil spirits that were always a present threat during this time of darkness. In addition to being the king of the gods, Odin was also the god of drink. So the burning of the tree was accompanied by plenty of alcohol and partying.
Even after Odin had been replaced by the baby Jesus, and Yule usurped by Christmas, many of the pagan beliefs persisted. The idea that the solstice was a time haunted by spirits and strange happenings continued and became the source for legends and stories well into the middle ages. One of my all time favorite examples of this is the Arthurian story “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” This is a late 14th-century alliterative story, written in Middle English. It is the tale of a Christmas feast of King Arthur and his court at Camelot. The festivities are interrupted by a knight with green skin, hair and armor who rides his equally green horse right into the castle hall and challenges any knight there to an exchange of axe blows. The young sir Gawain takes on the challenge on behalf of the king. He takes the axe and chops off the green knights head. Undaunted by this, the Green Knight picks his head up and puts it back on. He vows to return the blow upon Gawain in one year’s time and rides away. Queen Guinevere was frightened by these strange and seemingly supernatural events. But Arthur calms her by reminding her:
“Dere dame, to-day demay yow neuer; wel bycommes such craft vpon Cristmasse.”
“Beloved Lady, do not be troubled by what happened here today. Things of this kind can occur at Christmas time.”
But the Yule log was not just a benevolent protector. If not treated appropriately it could be dangerous as well. How should a Yule log be shown proper respect? It seems that a Yule log was actually a fairly temperamental piece of wood. For starters, it should never be purchased by the user. It had to be either directly harvested, or received as a gift. It was considered to be extremely unlucky if there was any difficulty at all in getting the log to ignite, so PLENTY of kindling needed to be kept on hand. The log was never to be touched by a barefooted woman or a squint eyed man. Yule logs also had something against flat-footed men. If such a man were to visit the house while the log was burning it was a bad omen for the family. I guess a lot of flat footed men spent Christmas alone. In England if the log failed to burn for the full twelve days of Christmas, or worse went out before dawn, this was also a portent of evil in the future. Family and friends would gather around the Yule fire at Christmas time for the warmth and protection from evil. But it was important to not get too close. Even the shadows cast by the fire could be dangerous. If the light from the Yule fire caused you to cast what appeared to be a headless shadow, then you were sure to die that year.
For the most part, however, as long as the Yule log was well used it was a good friend, even after it went out. Cinders from the log were considered to be useful talismans against evil. Rubbing them on the walls of a house, or keeping a dead cinder on ones person was considered to bring good luck. Ashes placed at the roots of vines and fruit trees were said to bring a good harvest. If dropped into well they would keep the water good. These same ashes were also used medicinally for both people and livestock.
So Christmas was celebrated in the Victorian era with singing, gift giving, eating and drinking with friends, just as it is modern times. However, the average Victorian also huddled around a burning log as much for protection against ghosts as for warmth. He drank his spiced wine joyously in fellowship with family and friends, but also to calm certain nagging fears that he may see his headless shadow flickering on the wall, or the ghost of one of his ancestors walking the halls when he went to bed. In that kind of atmosphere is it any wonder the Victorians developed a vigorous tradition of telling ghost stories around the Christmas fire? Even when it was not a holiday season, the Victorians were ghost story junkies. Despite the popular image of the prim and proper ladies and gentlemen of the period as being stodgy, stuffy and boring, the truth is they were literary thrill seekers.
Some of the best supernatural fiction ever written originates from 19th century England. And when Christmas came around the genre got an added boost. Far from being a fluke, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is a star example of a thriving holiday genre of literature. And Dickens made more than one contribution to Christmas spectral literature. “The Story of a Goblin who Stole a Sexton” is one of Dickens’ earlier works with a theme similar to A Christmas Carol. It involves a miserly grave digger who is abducted by Goblins on Christmas Eve, and shown the error of his ways. “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain” is about a man who does nothing but brood over the wrongs done to him in his life. He is haunted by a ghost that assumes the man’s form and offers to take away the man’s memory of all the wrong he has suffered. The man agrees but comes to regret it.
Not to be outdone by Dickens, many other authors of the time developed and published supernatural tales at Christmas. Some of the most noteworthy stories of the time were written by Montague Rhodes James, who wrote under the name M. R. James. In a preface to his first collection of tales, “Ghost Stories of An Antiquary” James writes.
"I wrote these stories at long intervals, and most of them were read to patient friends, usually at the seasons of Christmas."
But supernatural thrills and chills were not an exclusively British tradition. In 1898, the celebrated American horror author Henry James began his classic story “The Turn of the Screw” with the following words.
“The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.”
So what happened? How did a festival with such deliciously dark origins become the sticky sweet hallmark holiday we know today? It seems likely that the commercial aspect played a large part. Commercialization of a holiday, or anything else, does tend to white wash it. If you are trying to sell candy or toys (particularly to children) it helps to keep things as light and happy as possible. A holiday add for Hershey kisses that showed ghosts walking the halls of a child’s house, or headless shadows from a Yule fire, would have kids shaking in their beds all night. But whatever the reason may be, the whitewash has been pretty thorough. The majority of the public seem to have no idea that ghost stories and menacing superstitions were ever part of the winter holiday tradition. Even those whose job it is to make things scary seem blissfully unaware. Attempts by film makers to create Christmas horror movies tend to fall flat. Movies like “Silent Night Deadly Night,” and “Black Christmas” are decent enough slasher films but could easily be set in any time of year. Given the lengthy and rich history of Christmas’s dark side, one would think writers and directors could find better inspiration for a spooky seasonal horror film.
But just because toy companies and movie makers have been uninspired does not mean you have to be. If you have been feeling the need to counterbalance the excessive sweetness of the holidays, might I suggest you salt it with some new family ghost story telling traditions? There’s no reason why you can’t. It’s fun! And it’s a good way to keep the “spirit” of Christmas alive. I hope this helped to darken your holiday. Morbid Monday to ya!
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