The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story. …For ghost stories to be told on any other evening than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be impossible in English society as at present regulated. –Jerome K. Jerome, “Told After Supper,” 1891
It’s no secret that I love ghosts. In my considered opinion, a ghost can improve pretty much any story. For this reason (along with the whole dressing-up bit), Hallowe’en has always been my favorite holiday. But Victorian England had an entirely different holiday for telling ghost stories, and that holiday was… Christmas! (more…)
