Ah, Christmas and Dark Shadows! I too would have loved it if Christmas had been worked into a yearly episode. As I write this, something is tugging at my memory that I dimly recall having been mentioned on the forum way back when ... something about Dan Curtis having written or produced a Christmas episode for the show? Whatever can I be thinking of, I wonder ...
At any rate, I recall Christmas being mentioned only once, back during the B&W episodes when Victoria Winters was still at Collinwood. I think Carolyn walks into the drawing room and says something about her and David doing Christmas shopping in Bangor.
I'd like to have seen the Collins family in the present day singing carols around the Christmas tree and sipping wassail (or glogg - or something that warms one up!). No doubt singing carols would be a bittersweet experience for Barnabas, thinking back to his relatively untroubled life before 1795, spending Christmas with his parents and little sister. I wonder what sort of facial expressions Angelique or Cassandra would have worn while singing carols? "God rest ye merry gentlemen ... "
The only other Christmas reference I remember that made it on air is that at the end of one of the episodes (I just saw this on one of my tapes), I think just before the arrival of Laura (the Phoenix) in Collinsport, during the closing credits the announcer says something to the effect that "The producers and staff of Dark Shadows wish you and your family a very happy holiday season." I wonder if they did that each year? I thought it was a nice touch. Note, too, in light of some recent political controversy (some would say a tempest in a teapot) that this was nearly forty years ago, and the greeting was for a happy "holiday season" - gasp! - NOT "we wish you a Merry Christmas". Was DS ahead of its time?
I like Rainey's reminder about the old English tradition of reading ghost stories at Christmas. Having no British Isles heritage myself, this is not something I ever experienced, but it sounds delightful. (Though, come to think of it, I did read "A Christmas Carol" every Christmas Eve from about the ages of 11 to 17). I have gotten into the ghostly spirit this year, rather by chance, when I re-read H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Festival," which is set in a New England village at Yuletide. Very creepy!