Of Christmases Long, Long Ago

While preparing for our spooky themed Archives Crawl in the fall, Special Collections Department interns found a surprisingly large number of ghost stories printed in our historic newspapers. What made this discovery even more fun was the fact that these 19th century ghost stories were not printed during autumn months, as most people would expect; they were mostly printed in the months of December and January. This presented an opportunity to tell tales of one of my favorite, obscure, historical subjects- the tradition of ghost stories at Christmastime.

Christmas ghost stories were popularized during the Victorian Era, but their origins go back much further. So much further, in fact, they predate Christianity itself. People have commemorated the Winter Solstice since prehistoric times. The longest night of the year has always been tied to the concepts of darkness and death but also rebirth and the impending return of light. Many of our ancestors believed spirits would make themselves known during this transitional time. It’s not hard to imagine why ghost stories came into the picture.

From The Hauntings of Cold Christmas by Verity Holloway, printed in folk-horror magazine Hellebore’s Yuletide Special:

The Boston Daily Globe,
Saturday, November 22, 1884

“Ghosts and Christmas are inextricably linked in the British Isles. The darkening days and the dangers of winter weather naturally breed stories of powerful interlopers intent on harm. The Christmas ghost stories of medieval England are bloody affairs, frequently requiring the wandering corpses of the wicked to be returned to the grave by violence or ritual. The horror author M.R. James pointed out the similarities between these tales of winter revenants and those of Scandinavian midwinter sagas. Stories of contagion, the walking dead, and otherworldly torments are hardly what we would call Christmas cheer. But the similarities between medieval English winter stories and their Scandinavian cousins suggest these tales share a bloodline traveling far back into pre-Christian history.

Modern readers may be more comfortable with the Victorian variety of Christmas ghost, cozily antiquated without being alien, and yet the unwelcome return of the dead remained a strong theme throughout the 19th century. Simon Stern prefaces Volume 3 of the Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by saying that the 19th century festive ghost is an entity with no regard for the starkly contrasting boundaries of the wild and the home, the hearth and the snow, the living and the dead: ‘Instead of scaring up an external threat and imagining the home as the safe harbour, it terrorizes the inhabitants with spectral beings who wander between those two spheres.’”

 The clippings above are from the December 24, 1886 edition of The Boston Daily Globe. 

Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, Volume 1, 1851 

The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas is still alive and well in the U.K. Although the tradition became relatively popular among Victorians in the U.S., as demonstrated by the clippings above, for modern Americans it is largely a relic of Christmas Past. But remnants of the ritual remain. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a Christmas ghost story and one of the most famous stories in literary history, continues to influence the way Americans celebrate the holiday season. "It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," one of the most popular songs of the Christmas genre, says, “there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago...”

If you’re interested in starting your own new holiday tradition by reviving a very, very old one, it’s as simple as pulling a favorite eerie book off your shelf and slightly frightening everyone in your household. May your holidays be merry and bright- but also a little bit scary and dark, for old times’ sake.

Alyssa Persson

Processing Archivist

Two Water-hens 🎵🎵

This month, stop by the library to see the Least Water-hen (plate 349) on display in our Audubon case. Featuring both the male and the young hen, the water-hens are shown in a marshy environment. You may think that "male" is a typo here, because hens are female chickens, but in fact the water-hen is not a chicken. Water-hens are aquatic birds from the rail family, and their name comes from their resemblance to chickens.

Audubon fans who have paid close attention for the last few years may have noticed that in December we try to display a bird featured in the "Twelve Days of Christmas!" Birds of America doesn't include any traditional hens or chickens, but the water-hen comes close! We have previously shared four colly (calling) birds, turtledoves, and a partridge!

Visit us from December 9 through January 13 to see the water-hens on display, and our apologies if "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is now stuck in your head!

Elizabeth Roscio

Preservation Librarian

New Exhibit! “From the Good People of Massachusetts,” The Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records, 1917-1919

We are proud to share that our new exhibit "From the Good People of Massachusetts," The Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records is now on view in the display cases outside the Library (Room 341). Utilizing the Relief Committee collection, the exhibit tells the story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion, the resilience of the people of Halifax, and the goodwill of the people of Massachusetts. The exhibit also highlights the conservation work that the collection received in 2023-2024 and the connection that still remains between Halifax and Massachusetts.

The State Library received the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records from the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety in March of 1921. The collection contains correspondence, reports on the Halifax disaster, and reports prepared by the Relief Committee. The collection also contains meeting minutes of the Committee’s Halifax Branch, sample documents and forms, and copies of thank you letters from Halifax residents who received aid from the Committee. Four blueprints and 79 photographs of the damage in Halifax and the subsequent reconstruction efforts round out the collection.

A glimpse into the exhibit, showing two of the six cases

On the morning of December 6, 1917, two ships, the SS Mont-Blanc and the SS Imo, collided in Halifax Harbor. The Mont-Blanc, which was carrying munitions, caught fire. This led to an explosion and subsequent tsunami that devastated the Canadian city. When news of the explosion reached Massachusetts Governor Samuel McCall, he offered the mayor of Halifax immediate and unlimited assistance. In the weeks following, the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee was established and raised money to assist residents of Halifax who had lost their homes and all their belongings. Ultimately, the Committee raised over $500,000, furnished 1,800 homes, and raised an additional $25,000 in medical and educational funds for people blinded by the explosion.

The materials contained within the Relief Committee’s collection are profoundly moving, perhaps none more so than the letters of appreciation from Halifax residents.

You can see this very letter and so much more from the collection in the exhibit. If you visit during December, you can couple it with a visit to Boston’s official Christmas tree on the Common, a continued expression of gratitude from Nova Scotia to the people of Massachusetts. Visit during our open hours, Monday-Friday from 9:00-5:00, to check it out. This exhibit will run until April 2026.

Exhibits Working Group

State Library Newsletter - December Issue

December is here! In our latest newsletter, read all about our new exhibit and seasonal displays, library resources, new items in our online store, and more!

Pictured here is a preview, but the full issue can be accessed by clicking here. And you can also sign up for our mailing list to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox.

Two Tea Documents on Display

In case you missed it, last December we exhibited a broadside concerning the shipment of tea that arrived in Boston Harbor in November 1773. The question of what to do with this tea culminated in its destruction in the harbor on December 16, a monumental event that we know of as the Boston Tea Party. We're happy to share that the broadside is once again on display this month, along with a companion letter that was issued by the Boston Committee of Correspondence at the same time.

The broadside describes meetings held on November 28, 29, and 30 when residents of Boston and nearby towns gathered to discuss the matter of the tea. Click over to our blog post from last year to read about it in detail.

Serving as a companion to the broadside is the letter issued by the Boston Committee of Correspondence, which serves as a brief cover letter for the broadside. Displaying them together helps us to interpret how news was disseminated throughout the Commonwealth during the Revolutionary Period. Committees of Correspondence were established throughout the thirteen colonies in the 1770s, and the Massachusetts committee got its start in Boston in 1772. Through letter writing, committees formed a network of communication throughout towns in the Commonwealth, as well as between the colonies. Massachusetts’ was headquartered in Boston, and this letter is signed by William Cooper, whose signature appears on many of the 18th century documents in our collection. He served as Boston’s Town Clerk in addition to being a member of Boston's Committee of Correspondence.

As the meetings regarding the shipment of tea were held in Boston, it was the Boston Committee of Correspondence to issue both the displayed broadside and the companion letter. The letter notes that the three-day meeting was moved from Faneuil Hall to Old South Meeting House (a detail also included in the broadside), by writing “On Monday last this and the neighbouring Towns as one Body convened at Faneuil-Hall, ‘till the Assembly were so numerous as occasion’d an Adjournment to the Old South Meeting-House, where it was computed there was upwards of 5000 persons.” Though many individuals attended the meeting in person, the news still needed to be spread throughout the Commonwealth, most pressingly, to provide an account of the matters that were voted upon. As such, an account of the meeting was printed as the broadside, and then it was sent along with the letter to various towns. We are thrilled for the opportunity to display these items together, as intended.

As the Preservation Librarian, I must include a note on the logistics of displaying an item two years in a row. Materials in our Collection Spotlight are only on display for a period of 30 days at a time, as we limit the amount of time that they spend out of dark, climate-controlled storage. The Collection Spotlight case has a microclimate that is conditioned to 68% relative humidity, and its viewing panel is “SmartGlass” which has UV filters and a layer of light-controlling film. When not in use, the glass portion of the case is dark, until it is activated by a button which lights the case for 30 seconds. This allows the case to remain dark for the majority of the time and only illuminated when a visitor wants to view the exhibited item, allowing us to safely display even our most sensitive items on a more frequent basis than if they were in a regular case. While the tea broadside won’t make an appearance every year, the conditions of the Collection Spotlight case ensure that it is safe to display it two years in a row.

Mark the December 16th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party by visiting the library to see these two documents on exhibited together. They are on display from December 2 through January 6. Huzzah!

Elizabeth Roscio

Preservation Librarian