Selected Atmospheric Reading for the Solstice: H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival"

Marblehead, Massachusetts (Lovecraft's inspiration for Kingsport)

Late today begins the Winter Solstice for most of North America. So, how can you make the year's darkest period even more brooding and weird? Reading weird tales, of course! H.P. Lovecraft's "The Festival" is the best candidate for injecting the oddity of nature's shift into one's mind. Conceived from Lovecraft's own wintry experience in the ancient burroughs of Marblehead, Massachusetts in December, 1922, the strange story remains one of the master's finest in terms of atmosphere and pure imagery. Even for those who have never seen the haunting colonial sights of old New England, HPL's powerful descriptions generate an engagingly bizarre environment for the eerie phenomena of the story.

Though debatably less related to the Cthulhu Mythos than other stories, "The Festival" stands on its own grotesque legs as a masterpiece. It effectively captures everything strange about this time of year. The Yule with its old pagan connotations, frigid and dead winter, and allusions to the shadows of colonial times--alongside the much more archaic beliefs sheltered in the colonial houses themselves--creates an outre mood almost overwhelming. The esoteric and terrible anachronisms encountered are truly chilling, as they ought to be when one considers Lovecraft's other source material kindling this piece. In Joshi's Selected Letters (Vol. 3), HPL wrote: ""In intimating an alien race I had in mind the survival of some clan of pre-Aryan sorcerers who preserved primitive rites like those of the witch-cult--I had just been reading Miss Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe." The dream-like quality of the story, underscored by the blurred ending, leaves off with only the certainty that the narrator truly has experienced some unhallowed ride through the forever haunted rites of winter--the Yuletide.

There are few finer tales, from Lovecraft or anyone else, than "The Festival" for drinking in the funereal spirit of the next few days. Inhale it carefully, particularly if it is a first read through, savoring every drop of eldritch horror. It's one of the best presents the reader of weird fiction can give to themselves for the Yuletide.

Read it at Dagonbytes here: "The Festival."

-Grim Blogger