Christmas is inherently creepy for a number of reasons, not least because much of it is predicated on a complete stranger breaking into our houses at some unspecified point in the early hours. Well-meaning he may be, but it's odd behaviour for a man of his age (around 170 years old, give or take).
Back in 1843, Charles Dickens mined the real spooky season for his novella, A Christmas Carol, in which the cantankerous old miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, was famously visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future to frighten him enough to change his “bah, humbug” ways. That it’s now become canon in our Christmas culture also speaks volumes to us all being invested in the dark side of the enforced frivolity of the festive period; a seasonal palate-cleanser, if you will.
It goes further back than that. According to Norse legend, when the Pagans celebrated Yule, the shortest and darkest day of the year (December 21), it went hand in hand with beer drinking (festive!) and ritual animal sacrificing (not so much!). While there’s still cosmic gatherings at Glastonbury to be found on the winter solstice IRL, Christmas TV offerings since the 1970s have also been traditionally on the shady side as well, especially with the advent of A Ghost Story For Christmas.
A Ghost Story For Christmas beginnings
It was back in 1971 that the BBC decided to start screening a ghost story on Christmas Eve. The first ever show was The Stalls of Barchester, by M.R. James, and featuring Robert Hardy as the ill-fated Dr. Haynes. Over the next four years, on the same date, four different ghost stories by James were aired; in 1976, a version of Charles Dickens’ The Signalman was broadcast, followed by two original ghoulish tales for the following the two years afterwards.
But after the 1978 production, the idea was dropped. It wasn’t until almost 30 years later, in 2005, that it was revived by BBC Four with another MR James story, A View From A Hill. The hauntings have been sporadic from this point onwards – with creepy stories shown in 2006, 2010, and 2013 – but have become an annual tradition again since 2018, with the exception of one in 2020 because, well, that year was terrifying enough already.
The actor and director Mark Gatiss (perhaps most famous for The League of Gentleman and Sherlock) has produced the last five years of stories, including 2019’s Martin’s Close, featuring Peter Capaldi, and steadily, Gatiss has been pulling in bigger names and more expansive productions for the Christmas Eve scare-a-thon.
2023’s ghost story
This year is no exception, and he’s lined up Game Of Thrones’ Kit Harrington and Slow Horses’s Freddie Fox in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lot No. 249, in which the purchase of an Ancient Egyptian mummy at an auction leads to a terrible series of events for two Oxford students.
On the announcement of the 2023 outing, Gatiss said he was happy to be carrying the trend of what’s become a signature seasonal TV show: “It’s a serious delight for me to delve once again into the brilliant work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this time for the Christmas Ghost story.” He added, “Lot No.249 is a personal favourite and is the grand-daddy (or should that be Mummy?) of a particular kind of end of Empire chiller: a ripping yarn packed with ghastly scares and who-knows-what lurking in the Victorian closet.”
Lot No.249 will air on BBC Two in December.
