A Victorian Gothic Christmas: Ghost Stories, Candlelight and Dark Velvet
The modern Christmas, the one with the tree and the cards and the turkey, was largely put together by the Victorians. It is easy to forget that the same people who popularized all of that also sat around the fire on Christmas Eve and frightened each other with stories about the dead. The Victorian Christmas was warm, but it was also dark, candlelit and a little haunted, and that version is the one worth borrowing if your taste runs gothic.
This guide covers where the ghost story custom came from, what a Victorian room actually looked like in December, and how to build a gothic Christmas at home without turning the house into a museum.
Ghost stories on Christmas Eve
Telling tales of the supernatural in midwinter is older than the Victorians. The long nights and the gathered household made it a natural season for them, and there are hints of the habit in earlier English writing. What the nineteenth century did was turn it into an expected part of the holiday, helped along by magazines that printed special Christmas numbers full of spectral fiction.
Dickens and A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in December 1843. It is a ghost story first and a Christmas story second: Marley in chains, three spirits, a gravestone with Scrooge's name on it. The book was an immediate success, and Dickens kept the Christmas ghost going for years afterward in the seasonal issues of his own magazines. If one text set the template for a haunted Christmas, it is this one.
M. R. James
Later in the century the Cambridge scholar M. R. James wrote ghost stories and, by most accounts, read them aloud to friends at Christmas gatherings. His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, appeared in 1904. His style is quieter than Dickens: old books, old churches, something glimpsed at the edge of a lamp. For a gothic Christmas, his stories are the better match. Read one aloud on Christmas Eve with the lights off and you are doing exactly what his first listeners did.
What the Victorian room looked like
Pieces for a candlelit parlor
Forget the white and silver of a department store window. A Victorian parlor in December was heavy, dark and warm. Walls were often deep red, green or brown. Fabrics were velvet, plush and damask. Furniture was dark wood, carved where possible. Light came from the fire, oil lamps and candles, which meant pools of gold surrounded by shadow rather than an evenly lit room.
The tree itself was made fashionable in Britain after an 1848 engraving of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's family gathered around one at Windsor. Those trees were tabletop sized, lit with real candles and hung with glass, paper and sweets.
Mourning and black
After Prince Albert died in 1861, Victoria wore black for the rest of her life, and mourning dress became an elaborate social code. Black crepe, jet jewelry, hair kept in lockets. That culture of remembrance sits underneath a lot of what people now call Victorian gothic. Our piece on skull decor and memento mori covers the older idea behind it: that keeping death in view makes the living hours count.
How to style a Victorian gothic Christmas
Color: black, oxblood and gold
Choose a deep red, a black and one warm metal. Gold or old brass suits the period better than silver. Green should come from real evergreen rather than from fabric, so it reads as living. White appears only as candle wax and the occasional paper ornament.
Fabric
Velvet is the signature. A velvet runner on the mantel, a velvet throw on a chair, velvet ribbon tied in plain bows on the tree. Avoid shiny satin, which looks modern under a lamp.
Light
Turn the overhead light off and keep it off. Use candles at different heights on the mantel, a lamp or two with warm bulbs, and the tree lights set low. A raven moonlight lamp on a side table gives the corner a figure and a glow at once. For placing open flames safely, see our candle styling guide. Real candles on a tree are where the Victorians got it wrong; use LED candles there.
The mirror
Victorian rooms used mirrors to double the candlelight, and a dark arched frame above a mantel is the easiest way to get that effect. The gothic cathedral arch mirror has the right church-window shape. Put candles in front of it and the room gains a second set of flames.
The tree
A smaller tree is more accurate and easier to make look rich. Dress it in deep red ribbon, glass ornaments and a few dark figures. Ravens and crows were common in Victorian literary imagery, and a gothic crow glass ornament or two among the red bows reads as deliberate. The Yule ornaments collection has bats, ravens and celestial glass in the same round format, which keeps the tree consistent. For a fully black tree, our black Christmas tree ideas cover the lighting problem.
Underneath, a dark skirt finishes it. The burgundy and gold triple moon tree skirt is close to the Victorian palette, and the rest of the tree skirts are on black grounds that suit a dark parlor.
The mantel
The fireplace was the center of the Victorian Christmas, and it is where the ghost stories were told. Give it a velvet runner, evergreen, candles and stockings in one dark family. The Christmas stockings include moon phase and planchette designs that look appropriately uncanny in firelight, and our stocking and mantel guide explains spacing. One or two objects from the gothic decor range, a skull, a lantern, a small sculpture, give the shelf weight.
A ghost story evening
Pick a night close to Christmas. Lights out except candles and the fire. One reader, one story, read aloud in full. A Christmas Carol is long, so read one stave a night over five nights, or choose a single short M. R. James tale such as Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad. Mulled wine or hot cider. No phones. It costs nothing and it is the most authentically Victorian thing you can do in December.
For the rest of the room, our gothic Christmas decor guide takes the same approach through every space in the house.
One lamp for the ghost story corner
Frequently Asked Questions About Victorian Gothic Christmas
Why did Victorians tell ghost stories at Christmas?
Midwinter was already associated with the supernatural, and long, dark evenings gathered the household around one fire. Victorian magazines printed Christmas issues full of ghost stories, and Dickens' A Christmas Carol of 1843 fixed the link in the popular mind.
What colors are used in Victorian Christmas decor?
Deep red, dark green, black and gold or brass, with natural evergreen. Fabrics were heavy, usually velvet or damask. Light came from candles, lamps and the fire, so rooms were warm and shadowed rather than bright.
What is the difference between Victorian and gothic Christmas decor?
Victorian decor is the period style: velvet, dark wood, candlelight, small trees. Gothic decor pushes the darker side of it further, with black as a main color, ravens, skulls and church-arch shapes. A Victorian gothic Christmas combines the two.
Which ghost stories are good to read on Christmas Eve?
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is the obvious start. For something shorter and stranger, try M. R. James, whose collected stories were written partly for reading aloud at Christmas.
The Victorians gave Christmas its tree and its cards, and they also gave it a ghost at the fireside. Keep the candles low and the velvet dark, and leave room for a story.
Related Reads
