It's the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling And everyone telling you be of good cheer
It's the most wonderful time of the year
It's the hap-happiest season of all
With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings When friends come to call
It's the hap-happiest season of all
There'll be parties for hosting Marshmallows for toasting And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories-Hold on... Who the hell tells ghost stories around Christmas? That's more of a summer camp slash Halloween thing. Why does that song go like that?
I once asked my brother Tony about this, and he replied: "Isn't A Christmas Carol a ghost story?" It has ghosts in it, but it is not a ghost story. By that logic, The Bible is a ghost story. I'm not being a dick, The Bible explicitly has ghosts described in it. We're getting nowhere.
According to a quick Google search: “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories,” wrote British humorist Jerome K. Jerome as part of his introduction to an anthology of Christmas ghost stories titled “Told After Supper“ in 1891. “Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters.”
It's no surprise, I guess. People argue that "Christ is being taken out of Christmas", but here's the thing: Christmas predates Jesus by about a decade. Sorry to spoil it for you, but Christmas has pagan and Roman roots. When Christianity spread, the early Christians couldn't get rid of the heathen winter festivals. So if you couldn't beat 'em, you'd change the festival's name and be done with it.
When the puritans came to America, they didn't bring Christmas with them, because puritans are spoil-sports. In the 19th century, around the time when A Christmas Carol was published, Christmas started to become popular in America. It was Americanized, and spread throughout the world. I suppose in a sense, in that way, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It brought a pagan festival back to life, and now people argue that Jesus is being taken out of it.
Have a lovely day.
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