The 25 Strangest days of Christmas Day - Why Victorian Christmas's Resembled a Tim Burton Movie

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back, dear listeners to the Strange History podcast. I'm

0:03 Speaker 1: your host, Amy here to remind you that Christmas wasn't

0:07 Speaker 1: always about sugar, cookies and department store sales. Once upon

0:11 Speaker 1: a snowy Victorian December, Christmas was spooky. Today begins our

0:17 Speaker 1: countdown of the twenty five strangest Victorian Christmas traditions, starting

0:22 Speaker 1: with the Holidays Forgotten identity. Christmas was a ghost story

0:26 Speaker 1: season picture a parlor lit only by firelight, Frost gathering

0:31 Speaker 1: at the corners of the glass, shadows stretching along the wallpaper.

0:35 Speaker 1: This was the Victorian Christmas Eve scene. Families gathered specifically

0:40 Speaker 1: to tell ghost stories. Not just a Christmas Carol, though

0:44 Speaker 1: Dickens perfected the formula, but dozens of tales printed each

0:48 Speaker 1: December in literary magazines like All the Year Round and

0:52 Speaker 1: Household Words. In eighteen sixty one, London Paper published eight

0:58 Speaker 1: new ghost stories just for Christmas Eve. Victorian's believed winter

1:02 Speaker 1: was when the boundary between the living and the dead thinned,

1:06 Speaker 1: so naturally Yule Tide meant spectral visitors. If Christmas once

1:11 Speaker 1: felt eerier, you weren't imagining it.

1:14 Speaker 2: This episode is sponsored by Missletoe's security systems the festive

1:18 Speaker 2: personal space solution. Tired of cousin Harold lurking under the

1:23 Speaker 2: mistletoe like a Dickensian goblin of romance, one sprits of

1:28 Speaker 2: our patented peppermint no thank you spray sends him gently

1:31 Speaker 2: but firmly, back to the eighteen forties social etiquette. Missletoe's

1:36 Speaker 2: security systems. Because consent is the greatest carol of all.

1:40 Speaker 1: So the next time someone tells you Halloween is the

1:43 Speaker 1: spooky holiday, smile politely and whisper Christmas was haunted. First

1:50 Speaker 1: Join me tomorrow as we explore another delightfully strange Victorian

1:54 Speaker 1: holiday custom. But be warned it involves dead birds and

1:59 Speaker 1: greeting cards. See you then,