Once upon a time, before cable and electric lights, winter was long, cold, and dark. The ground was too frozen to work on, and you couldn’t see board games after dark.
So people told stories. Lots of them.
And everyone knows that a good scare is a whole lot more entertaining than Uncle Jim-Bob’s 6843468435th retelling of that one fish he almost caught that time.
Over time, the tradition of the fireside ghost story fell by the wayside, enjoying a brief revival in the Victorian era (when Medieval traditions had a major fan club going), and then died out again, to be confusingly referenced in 1963’s “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” with no explanation whatsoever.