You know, if you just hang on, all the nagging questions (Deep Throat, Kenneth and his frequency) will be answered.
Well, thirteen years after 2006, an answer has arrived for the question posed in this post: why is there a reference to “Scary Ghost Stories” in The Christmas Song?
There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago
I was so obsessed with finding the answer that I even contacted the composer’s grandson via his blog, but he could only say that his grandfather was the composer, not the lyricist.
Facebook’s algorithm must have looking in the blog archives, because FB posted Smithsonian Magazine’s Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories, which led to Smithsonian’s Why Do People Tell Ghost Stories at Christmas (which even references the song) and evidently the real question is, “Why Don’t Middle Class Americans (Like Ellen) Tell Ghost Stories at Christmas,” because evidently Christmas ghost stories are a real thing people do. Or did. Or at least they did it for “much of the 19th century.”
Long, long ago indeed.
7 responses to “A Return to An Outstanding Question From 2006”
That would explain the ghosts in A Christmas Carol.
I take it as (scary ghost stories) and (tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago), but I suppose that if one is talking about scary ghost stories being *part* of the glories of Christmases long, long ago, that would be long, long ago at this point…
(and yes. Dickens wrote tons of Christmas Stories even though we only really know about one of them now, and most of them have, if not always ghosts exactly, something creepy in them. There’s only one out of the batch that I can think of that uses entirely human idiocy to form the main Thing To Resolve.)
Sarah – that is absolutely true. It’s so odd to think of it as a ghost story, though. I’d say If I were pressed I’d say it’s 80% Christmas, 20% ghosts, because a lot of time is given to Tiny Tim and the Christmas goose the next morning.KC – I need to look that up. I still have Mom’s Complete works of Dickens. (Moments later) even better, I have Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens_bibliography#Christmas_short_stories
Worth noting that there are also Christmas novellas are in the grid above that section. (The Chimes is basically a hybrid of Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life.) True that the ghosts are more vehicles than the point in Christmas Carol, but they are still quite definitely ghosts…
But also, in old books when people get together, there is a lot of story-telling and some of that is ancestral (including Similar Festive Occasions, When The Oldest Person Present Was A Child – including Christmases long, long ago)(but also including stories of when great-great-aunt-so-and-so was a spy during the Revolutionary War) and some is local ghost stories. What do you do at a family holiday reunion if you have no movies or TV or radio, during times you can’t plausibly be eating or sleeping? Paper games, forfeits, amateur music, dancing, walks/sleigh rides, and: storytelling…
KC – I just saw The Winter’s Tale, Judi Dench is decorating a Christmas tree and she asks a little boy to tell her a story and he says “A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one. Of sprites and goblins.”
Judi Dench is amazing. I got to see her live once in Merry Wives of Windsor a bit over a decade ago, and… yeah, she is just amazing. (and, in that production a bit over a decade ago, she turned *multiple sequential cartwheels* on stage. Over 70 and turning cartwheels on stage without any sort of safety net! and she did them beautifully as well.)
But yes. I am not personally on board with the Sad Tales To Make Winter Even Sadder train, but it seems like a lot of people were into it?
KC- yes! She was the best part of the movie, and I say that with a big soft spot for Kenneth Branagh. Everything she said just sounded so … understandable and full of personality.