Winter Solstice and the Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories on the Darkest Night of the Year [also included-- end of year blog schedule]

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice-- the darkest night of the year-- and there is a tradition of reading Ghost Stories to go with that.

I have posted about it here before and shared this series of books-- Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories published by Biblioasis. I have those posts below, but also, check out this STAR review I did last year of Ellen Datlow's Winter Solstice Horror anthology. t just came out in paperback.

Lila over at Passively Recommending Books has this Five for Friday featuring Winter Horror.

The darkest night of the year is a great time to tell ghost stories. Embrace it. Also share the tradition in your buildings, on your website and social media (linked below and here)

Before I leave you all, here is a quick note on RA for All Programming:

• Regular posts on 12/23 and 24 and 27
• Last 2 posts of the year-- 12/30 a post about the top posts on RA for All for 2024 and 12/31 Becky's Best Reads of the Year Conversation Starter style
• RA for All is off 1/1 thru 1/5
• I will be back 1/6 and 7 with my annual goals posts. Beginning with my post doing an assessment of how I did in 2024 and setting goals for 2025. 

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022

New, Old, Winter Storytelling

I am bringing back these posts from year's past. I am happy to report that my family has acquired more of these amazing little books and we still read them around the Solstice and have incoirtaped them into or regular holiday season traditions. 

You don't need the specific books I mention to make this a thing at your library. It is also not tied specifically to any one holiday, but rather to the long winter nights, meaning it is very inclusive.

Enjoy. I will be back on Tuesday.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2017

Resurrecting A Victorian Christmas Storytelling Tradition

Yesterday, I came upon this article from the Smithsonian Magazine, “A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories.”

This made me remember that I already made this plea to all of you, my readers, almost exactly a year ago- not that this fact surprises anyone. I guess I was a year early on the trend, so today, I have a rerun of that post where I talk about this tradition, discuss how you can turn this into a fun display, and even offer up some reads.

And, I happy to report, as a family, we are keeping this tradition going in our house for second year in a row. 

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MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2016

A New, Old, Winter Storytelling Tradition With A Library Display Opportunity

The weekend after Thanksgiving I went back to my old neighborhood in Chicago to do some holiday shopping and stopped in at Volumes Bookcafe.

While I was there I found a beautiful series of paperback, spooky stories on display.  Below is a picture of the front of the three I purchased and a shot of the back of the Burrage title.

You can zoom in to read the back, but basically, these titles have been produced to revive the Victorian tradition of families getting together to read ghost stories aloud on Christmas Eve. 

[Editors note 12/20/24-- the link in this paragraph is gone, use the one above from the Smithsonian] I did some more research on this topic and found this interesting article that explains the tradition in more detail. It turns out that the tradition hit its heyday in Victorian Times, but probably dates back before that. As the article also notes, while much of our current holiday season traditions are remarkably similar to those from Victorian times, this one specific tradition has all but disappeared.

The winter, with it’s long nights, led to spookier thoughts and more forced togetherness huddled inside, around the fire. Ghost stories made for popular entertainment in these circumstances. But Christmas Eve in particular, when large groups were assembled already, grew to be the most popular time to read ghost stories aloud. 

As I mentioned above, I did purchase three titles in this series and our family plans to spend a few evenings over the days off this holiday season to read these stories together, aloud, around our 21st Century fire place. No screens or other distractions involved. 

While I hope some of you out there give the old tradition a try, I think it is a great display option for all libraries. Any spooky story will do. And, it is not Christmas specific. A spooky story for a long winter’s night works no matter where you live, regardless of whether you celebrate a holiday during this season or not. It is a display you can do now, to take advantage of the time people have off of work and school over the next 2 weeks or wait for the new year.

Let’s bring this tradition back through the public library