Christmas and Scary Ghost Stories

On a local radio station, Chjristmas songs/carols are played 24/7 from around Thanksgiving until Dec 26. They play the usual mix of classics to contemporary, originals to covers. As I was listening, a rendition of "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" was playing. As the lyrics scrolled through my ears, I came upon a line that puzzled me. There is a mention of telling scary ghost stories. Granted, I was not born in the states but have lived the majority of my life here. In all that time and all those Christmas past, I had never heard of a single soul telling scary ghost stories during the holidays. No one ever huddled around the Yule log to exchange tales of disembodied spirits. Neither are the movie theaters filled with features in this particular genre.

However, this is not to say that there arent any ghost stories that float around this time of year. Most notably, A Christmas Carol does have 3 spirits that guide Scrooge along but they can hardly be considered scary or even ghosts in the sense of person who is no longer in the world of the living. It makes me wonder if this practice was sometnhing that people did when this carol was originally penned