41 The Yule Lads
December 10, 2009 
From Christmas 2009: What could be scarier than Scrooge’s ghosts? The Yule Lads could be! By suggestion from Megan on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.com/XmasStocking. Email me at TopElf at MyChristmasStocking.NET. And you can wish someone Merry Christmas or share your Christmas memory at MyChristmasStocking.net. Just click the Call Me button and enter your phone number. My voicemail will call you for free.
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Featured music:
“Oh Come All Ye Faithful” by Sirens from “River City Christmas” (Arbor Records Ltd.)
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Background music:
“Highway to Wenceslas” by Brian Bunker Christmas (from GarageBand.com)
“Christmas Time is Here” by Thomas Marriott, Bill Anschell, Jeff Johnson, John Bishop from “The Cool Season – An Origin Records Holiday Collection, Vol. 2” (Origin Records)
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More information:
About.com has a personal reflection on the Yule Lads, with lots of info.
Of course, Wikipedia has an article full of history.
The Christmas Stocking 
Hi Lee … I think you were asking something about why a song mentioned ghost stories if it were a Christmas song? The English have a long history of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. A Christmas Carol reflects this history with the many ghosts that appear. One of the best known in this tradition was the scholar M.R. James who had the habit of writing ghost stories for his students and reading them aloud with dramatic emphasis during Christmas Eve entertainments. He had several collections of them published and you can hear some of them read aloud at Librivox.org.
Hi, Julie,
Actually, I didn’t ask, it was a listener who wrote in. I haven’t found anything about a history of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve, but the Victorians did have a fascination with ghosts, and there were many published, and they were read out loud in the evening. Christmas annuals, collections of short stories, were very popular, and of course they contained ghost stories. You are correct about M.R. James, apparently, though. I’m going to have to look him up. Thanks for the heads up!
–Lee
I also wondered if it was just M.R. James but there is at least the persistent story that the British and ghost stories go together at Christmas like … ummm … holly and ivy. 😀
Here is a link where that is mentioned a bit more.
http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=3873871
Also, the British host of “the flicks that Church forgot” podcast mentioned the long standing custom in his most recent episode, as well he would considering that he talks about horror films.
http://theflicksthatchurchforgot.podomatic.com/
Thanks, Julie.