Seth on the spooky side of Christmas
Seth is a modern cartoonist who shows great respect for the past. He's a fan of classic-era ghost stories — in Victorian times, well-known authors like Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton chose to set their spookiest stories at Christmas. Seth has designed and illustrated a set of these stories — new additions to the collection this year include "Afterward," "The Diary of Mr. Poynter" and "The Crown Derby Plate." In his own words, Seth describes the origins of these ghostly Christmas tales.
I started reading ghost stories, and specifically the early Victorian classic ghost stories, back in the early '90s. At some point as I was digging into the genre, I discovered that ghost stories were traditionally linked with Christmas in England and the colonies. At first that struck me as very odd, because it seemed like ghost stories should be connected to Halloween. But then I remembered, of course, A Christmas Carol, the most famous Christmas ghost story of all, and so I looked into it a little more and I discovered that there was a big industry of ghost stories that were written specifically for Christmas, but didn't really have anything to do with Christmas. It's an old tradition that goes back to what used to be called winter tales because it was just people telling scary stories in the winter because it was dark and cold. This became associated with Christmas traditions.
Seth's comments have been edited and condensed.