I can’t sleep.
Maybe this is because of the dangerous amount of matcha I consumed today, but it’s more likely because of the hauntingly beautiful Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories.
The series of short stories released each year only gets better with age and 2021 is no exception. This year’s short stories include Bernard Capes’ An Eddy on the Floor, F. Marion Crawford’s The Doll’s Ghost and Edith Wharton’s Mr. Jones.
Each year, award-winning cartoonist Seth teams up with independent Windsor, Ont. bookshop Biblioasis to reprint editions of three Victorian ghost stories.
Each story is beautifully bound, embossed and illustrated by Seth. These stories of haunted jail cells, dolls and estates provide a welcome—yet somewhat morbid—dose of holiday cheer.
Scary stories and the holidays may sound contradictory, but the best holiday stories are ghost stories. Take Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, for example—there’s nothing that screams holiday cheer like a reminder of one’s own mortality.
While these stories have minimal connection to the holiday season—a connection I hope the publishers will curate further in other reprints—they still somehow manage to get me in the holiday spirit.
There’s something enchanting about a holiday tradition surrounding short stories. As a child, I visited a local museum in my hometown each year with my grandmother to hear the same ghost stories repeated. Even now, my mother and I still make time each Christmas to read The Gift of the Magi.
What makes these experiences unique isn’t just the stories themselves, but their packaging and the tradition surrounding them. The whimsy of having a tour guide dressed in Victorian clothing tell the tale of a haunting is unmatched. The edition of The Gift of the Magi I have at home is beautifully illustrated and condensed into 24 small books to form an advent calendar. I’ve had it since childhood.
Seth’s books—petite and illustrated with gorgeous minimalist designs—feel somehow like a more mature version of my childhood traditions. In reality, Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories are a tradition everyone, young and old, can make a part of their holidays.
With these beautifully illustrated books, it seems in this case one really can judge a book by its cover.
The writer received press copies of the books to review. However, this article is not sponsored and all opinions are their own.
Featured image by Isabel Harder.
