Which Lovecraft tale is set during an overnight visit to Kingsport at Christmas?

The Lovecraft tale set during an overnight Christmas visit to Kingsport is “The Festival.”

The story follows an unnamed narrator making his first visit to the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Kingsport during Yuletide. He stays with mysterious relatives, encounters a silent procession, and is drawn into an occult celebration beneath the town’s church. The visit becomes a nightmare involving masked figures, forbidden books, and a passage into an otherworldly landscape.

Lovecraft wrote “The Festival” in October 1923, and Weird Tales published it in January 1925. Its Christmas setting is deliberately older and darker than conventional holiday imagery: the narrator describes the festival as preceding Bethlehem, Babylon, and even human civilization.

The story was inspired by Lovecraft’s December 1922 visit to Marblehead, Massachusetts. Kingsport is fictional, but its streets and landmarks reflect Marblehead. The Moon-Bog, The Tomb, and The Temple are separate Lovecraft tales, not the Christmas Kingsport story.