The chilling, untold Christmas stories hidden in Dublin ’s history
The holiday season conjures festive fun for most, but many remain unaware of the chilling, untold Christmas stories hidden throughout Dublin ’s history.
As a winter celebration that encompasses far more than the birth of Jesus, Santa Claus, or gift giving ceremonies, Dublin plays host to several haunting holiday traditions. This was the topic of the Creepy Christmas talk hosted by Dublin City Council ’s Historians in Residence Elizabeth Keogh and Dr Allison Galbari this December.
With events at Dublin’s Central Library and Charleville Mall Library, the pair of historians peeled back the curtain of the frightening festive folklore that has quietly vanished from the collective consciousness. Whether that’s Christmas jack-o-lanterns or unnerving floating lights, those who dare to truly embrace the mythos of the Yuletide season will discover the true darkness of December.
The creative engagement coordinator for Dublin City Council Culture Company Dr Galbari spoke to Dublin Live about festive frights and how she uses her background in archaeology and folklore to delve into Dublin’s untold history. One of her most fascinating revelations was that the famous jack-o-lantern is not just a Halloween tradition.
Often carved from turnips, which gave them a far more creepy aesthetic than the pumpkins most will recognise, during the 1930s in Ireland, jack-o-lanterns were associated with both Samhain and Christmastime. Dr Galbari explained that they would sometimes be carved for turnip or apple headed dolls, with some people carving potato heads with turnip bodies to create Christmas figures.
“You would have kids talking about carving them and hiding them along the road from the church so that when people would be coming home from mass, they'd see these creepy glowing faces in the hedges or in the trees,” she said. “They’re seeing these floating lights in the hedges and in the fields and they're very scared because it's Christmas night and it's dark and it's creepy and it's cold.”
While the Christmas jack-o-lantern tradition has fallen away, the same cannot be said about the Christmas candle, which is still a practice in Dublin and around the country. “The idea of the Christmas candle is usually the youngest person in the house would light a candle,” Dr Galbari said. “You'd place it in the window. And that is supposed to guide Mary and Joseph on their travels through the night.
“It's also supposed to help guide anybody who's out on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. It's supposed to sort of be a guiding and comforting light for the recently deceased who might be out wandering the streets on Christmas Eve. The goal is you light that candle and it needs to stay lit until morning, and if it goes out, you're going to have bad luck.”
Often stories of this bad luck would involve a family member dying that night or in the coming days. Because of this fear, people would have giant Christmas candles, although some brave families would have enough faith in their candle to leave it by the windowsill.
“The turnips did come into play with the Christmas candles. You take a turnip and you cut the bottom off of it to give yourself a flat surface and then you cut a hole in the top that is big enough to fit that candle turning your turnip into a candleholder,” Dr Galbari said.
There’s a lot of creepy connections to Christmas, with Dr Galbari highlighting that even Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is essentially a ghost story and Irish gothic writer Sheridan Le Fanu also setting many ghostly stories around wintertime.
One myth relates to a ghost that shows to ring up the bells at Christchurch each year. While it’s hard to determine the source of this tale, Dr Galbari said a 19th century verger swore he watched the bells ring all on their own one evening.
From costumed Wrenboys parading through Irish towns with music, songs, and drumming every December 26 to international traditions like the Germanic Krampus creature, there’s so much more to Christmas beliefs than the night of the Nativity. While many of these customs might feel strange and usual today, they're a part of Dublin’s heritage and deserve recognition each holiday season.
This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme