Right around Christmastime, people like to revisit their favorite holiday classics. It might be It’s a Wonderful Life or A Charlie Brown Christmas. Or perhaps it’s A Christmas Story or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Or maybe they crack open a book and reread “A Christmas Carol,” written by Charles Dickens.
Long before they could stream online movies or even had electricity, people spent their long winter nights huddled around a fire, telling ghost stories.
According to Tara Moore, author of Victorian Christmas in Print, and editor of The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, “The long midwinter nights meant folks had to stop working early, and they spent their leisure hours huddled close to the fire . . . to retell the local ghost story.”
It was in Victorian England that telling supernatural tales during the Christmas season became commercialized. Moore suggests that, “Higher literacy rates, cheaper printing costs, and more periodicals meant that editors needed to fill pages. Around Christmas time, they figured they could convert the old storytelling tradition to a printed version.”
More than any other pulp publisher, Street & Smith Publications regularly featured holiday issues, particularly around Christmas or New Year’s Day. It’s believed the publisher started the tradition of releasing a “holiday number” in The Popular Magazine. As early as 1904 — in the pulp magazine’s second year — the December issue advertised “Holiday Temptations” on its cover, and featured a woman standing under a sprig of mistletoe.
The tradition of running “Fine Christmas Stories” around the holidays continued largely uninterrupted through the Second January Number of 1930 of The Popular Magazine. Street & Smith would continue this tradition in their other general fiction magazines such as Top-Notch Magazine and Complete Stories, as well as their specialized titles, Detective Story Magazine, Love Story Magazine, Western Story Magazine, and Wild West Weekly. You can even find a few Christmas issues of Sport Story Magazine.
Bernarr Macfadden knew a good commercial idea when he saw one. After debuting Ghost Stories in 1926, his magazine of “Uncanny, Spooky, (and) Creepy Tales” often had a ghost story in its January issues. You’ll find “Johnny Kelly’s Christmas Ghost” in the January 1927 number, while “My Yuletide Phantom” was the cover story for the January 1929 issue. In addition to a pair of Yuletide yarns, “Love — Beyond the Border” and “The Christmas Specter,” there was a Christmas tree on the front cover of the January 1930 Ghost Stories.
Commercialized or not, your friends from the PulpFest organizing committee — Mike Chomko, Jack and Sally Cullers, Bill Lampkin, Craig McDonald, Regie and David Powell, and Barry Traylor — would like to wish everyone a healthy and happy holiday season. We’ll be back one week from today, as we enjoy some time off with our families and friends.
After purchasing Liberty magazine in 1931, Bernarr Macfadden continued the tradition of featuring Christmas yarns and covers on the popular general-interest magazine. Our featured image is excerpted from John Drew’s cover for the December 24, 1932 number. Inside, the issue featured a pair of short stories — ” The Call of Christmas” and “Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus” — as well as an article, “How to Keep Peace on Earth,” by Lt. General Robert Lee Bullard.
The cover artist for our lead image, the January 1930 issue of Ghost Stories, is not known.
For some more holiday spirit, hop into your sleigh and fly over to our YouTube Channel for Craig McDonald’s latest video — Happy Holidays from PulpFest
And while you’re there, pick up a free subscription to catch all of our upcoming films.
Detective fiction fan Pete Collins joined our staff in September 2024. That month, he contributed an overview of Detective Fiction Weekly to salute the magazine’s centennial. We look forward to Pete’s contributions to our website. Thanks for the Christmas story, Pete.
