Winter Corner

The longest night, the light coming back day by day, and stories to read by the fire.

Clips: Skating in Central Park (Biograph, 1900); A Winter Straw Ride (Edison, 1906); Louis Lumière, Bataille de neige (1896); Frank E. Kleinschmidt, Santa Claus (1925); via Wikimedia Commons · public domain

Winter Postcards

25 Christmas, New Year and winter postcards from 1905 to 1922, to print and send.

See the postcards

Fireside Shelf

24 ghost stories and winter tales, free to read.

Browse the shelf

Yule Log

A log fire crackling in a hearth at Valley Forge, to leave playing all evening.

Light the fire

The returning light

The winter solstice, the longest night of the year north of the equator, is on Mon, 12/21/2026, 8:50 PM (UTC). Pick your city to see how long your night is, and how the daylight comes back after it.

More about Yule on the Wheel of the Year →

Sunrise and sunset are when the top of the Sun’s disc meets a level horizon, allowing for the bending of light by the air, as in published tables; hills, buildings and the weather make your own a little different. Times are for UTC.

Ghost stories round the Christmas fire

The Victorians told ghost stories at Christmas. In “A Christmas Tree” (1850), Charles Dickens remembers the Christmases of his childhood, when “we are telling Winter Stories—Ghost Stories, or more shame for us—round the Christmas fire.” His magazine Household Words brought out special Christmas numbers, and the one for 1852 carried Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story,” about a phantom child at the windows of a lonely manor in a winter that “was very cold.”

By 1891 the custom was familiar enough to tease. Jerome K. Jerome’s Told After Supper begins, “It was Christmas Eve,” and explains that whenever a few English-speaking people meet round a fire that night, they start telling each other ghost stories.

Find a story on the Fireside Shelf →