Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 148 - The Dark Origins of Christmas Mythology and Monsters
From Krampus and Belsnickel to ancient pagan festivals, Abby and Alan discuss the dark origins of Christmas mythology and monsters.
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
SOURCES
- Smithsonian Magazine Article by Kat Eschner - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-do-ghost-stories-go-christmas-180961547/
- All Things Interesting Article by Morgan Dunn: The Story Of Yule, The Raucous Pagan Celebration Of Winter That Inspired Christmas
- An article called The Legend of La Befana by Debra Thimmesh, on ItaliaRail.com
- Santa Claus: Real Origins and Legends on History.com
- English Heritage article by Tom Moriarty: The History of Father Christmas
- Atlas Obscura Article by Sarah Elizabeth Troop: The Monsters of Christmas
- Smithsonian Magazine Article by Colin Dickey: A Please to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories
Follow us on TikTok, X, Instragram and YouTube.
Join the conversation on Discord. Support us on Patreon.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. I am Abbey Brinker sitting here with Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:Today this is I don't know the fourth or fifth time that we have a holiday horror themed series to close out the year. Really, we've done this a few times before.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:But we are.
Speaker 2:No, we did Krampus. Yeah, do we do something on Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1:No, we've done Krampus, we have done the History of Yule with Miranda Warzell.
Speaker 2:Our best episode ever.
Speaker 1:I really like that one, and we also did the History of Holiday Horror generally.
Speaker 2:Wait. So what the fuck is this?
Speaker 1:So this is going to be a deeper dive into some of those topics, but it also is going to skew a little bit differently because of course I don't want to bomb everyone with the same exact information. So we're going to get into some Christmas creatures and different traditions and history that we haven't talked about before and revisit some of the things that we have, but in kind of greater detail and with more research.
Speaker 2:Wow, I had no idea.
Speaker 1:You never do. Celebrations, feasts and festivals around December and January date back thousands of years and while there is a tremendous variety when it comes to the type, focus and traditions, there are a few unifying factors. Today, we're going to talk about the spooky creatures, traditions and horror tropes from various religions, regions and beliefs that span the globe, from the history of Yule to Krampus and Belschnickel and Bafana.
Speaker 2:Belschnickel.
Speaker 1:Today we are talking about the vast and fascinating history of holiday horror.
Speaker 2:I thought Belschnickel was made up for the Office. That is incorrect. So Belschnickel's real, correct, wow.
Speaker 1:Before I explain all about Belschnickel to you, let us cite our sources. We used a Smithsonian Magazine article by Kate Eschner why Do People Tell Ghost Stories on Christmas. A BBC article by Clemency Burton-Hill when Christmas Carols Were Banned. An All Things Interesting article by Morgan Dunn, the Story of Yule, the Raucous Pagan Celebration of Winter that Inspired Christmas. An article called the Legend of La Bafana by Deborah Timmish on italiarailcom. Santa Claus Real Origins and Legends on historycom. An English Heritage article by Tom Moriarty, the History of Father Christmas. An Atlas Obscura. Article by Sarah Elizabeth Troop, the Monsters of Christmas. And a Smithsonian Magazine article by Colin Dickey a plead to resurrect the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories. To start things off, we need to go back to the most basic reason why this time of year has become what it is today.
Speaker 2:Consumerism.
Speaker 1:The biblical origins of Christmas are commonly understood the story of the birth of Jesus but we're not going to actually talk about that much today. Long before Christianity, ancient Germanic, pagans and Vikings celebrated Yule in the winter solstice. At that time, this holiday had no religious affiliation, only the celebration of the solar event. That being said, many of the ancient traditions are still celebrated today. Skinned as a Christian holiday, Yule is typically celebrated on the 21st of December, the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. That's the winter solstice, December, the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaker 2:That's the winter solstice.
Speaker 1:It's the day when the pendulum swings back, going forward. Each day will be lighter for a little bit longer. It's the perfect transition between the dark and the light half of the year and, obviously, historically right. This was incredibly important to people who relied on farming and foraging and crops and solar charging building their own structures and homes. Right Before there was a lot of modern conveniences. The movements of the sun and the seasons and the weather were everything to them.
Speaker 2:I understand.
Speaker 1:Historically, solar celebrations can be traced back thousands of years, especially around this time, and across hundreds of cultures. We've talked about some of them on this podcast, but Yule is certainly one of the most important to understanding the dark and complicated roots of festivals timed at the end of December, similar to Samhain, which is the episode with Miranda Warzel which is the root of what is now Halloween, but another pagan holiday.
Speaker 1:During Yule, the ancient Germanic people believed that magical forces and powers were stronger than usual. They also believed, similar to Halloween and Samhain, that the veil between the living and the dead was thinner. So in some cases Yule had this almost spooky, dark spiritual vibe to it. As Christianity began to spread across Europe, yuletide and other pagan festivals were either adopted or stamped out entirely. We can trace the word Yule and understand it to mean something very similar to celebration or festival. I'm going to quote from Morgan Dunn's All Things Interesting article Quote the earliest mention of Yule is found in the work of a chronicler and prolific historian called Bede, an English monk who is Quote noting that the old pagan calendar combined the Roman months of December and January into a single period called Gaiuli.
Speaker 1:He wrote the months of Gaiuli derive their name from the day when the sun turns back and begins to increase. In other words, this double month was built around the winter solstice, the time of year when daylight, which decreases steadily during the winter, starts to increase again. In Nordic regions, people would bring trees into their homes and decorate them with candles or orb-like objects to represent the sun.
Speaker 2:But why?
Speaker 1:Because they were worshiping the sun, like the idea was. This is we've made it through the absolute coldest, darkest time of the year. Now the sun is returning again and we want to worship the sun so that it will come back, and a lot of these cultures too. It was a heavy like God worship Like. Odin is very heavily worshipped around this time.
Speaker 2:He's not associated with trees, is he?
Speaker 1:No, he's associated with this time of year.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:He becomes essentially Father Christmas for a long time, and then Santa Claus, spoilers. We're getting ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Some guy chewed me out on Reddit because of that what? Some guy chewed me out on Reddit because of that what you got?
Speaker 1:into a fight with someone on Reddit.
Speaker 2:Sure did.
Speaker 1:Recently this happened.
Speaker 2:No, this was back when I was reading Krampus. Oh, they're asking for any historical texts that equivocates Odin with Santa.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And a full disclaimer said that this is not a historical text by any means. This is 100% a work of fiction, but it does have a connection, a very strong connection, between Norse mythology and what the fuck is Santa mythology called. And then he got real, real mad because you know, it wasn't a historical text. I could not have been more clear though.
Speaker 1:Ancient practices of the Yule log were even more poetic, with each spark representing a baby animal meant to be born in the spring. The idea of Christmas elves were invented in the US in the 19th century. There's nothing really historic about them and they also don't really have any clear ties to pagan tradition or any religious lore. However, the Nordic house sprites, or Nysa or Nysa, were a huge part of the Yule celebration that never made its way over to America.
Speaker 2:Are they related to candy elves? What's a?
Speaker 1:candy elf.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but we just watched a movie about them. We did. Yeah, remember the organization killed all the candy elves in Red Snow. No, you weren't paying attention at all.
Speaker 1:I blocked that part out. It snow. No, you weren't paying attention at all. I blocked that part out. It's not time to talk about red snow yet. Alan, the house spirits were known to come out at yule time and they sought offerings, mainly of porridge, to keep them happy. If they were not satisfied, they would punish the residents of the house, where they dwelled with pranks and tricks, and this is something we're going to talk a little bit later in the outline. A little bit more about creatures and monsters around christmas, and this is such a recurring theme.
Speaker 2:There is a movie about this exactly, called there's Something in the Barn.
Speaker 1:Alan's done a lot of holiday horror watching.
Speaker 2:I have when there is a. Do they call it an elf or a gnome? It's one or the other. They look like the very stereotypical garden gnome with the little red cap. I think it's an elf, though I think that's what they call. It takes place in norway. You have to do all these things to. There's a very, very, uh rigid set of rules that you have to follow to keep your your barn elf yeah, your barn elf happy, okay, and then he'll do like little things and help out around your farm. But if you don't do the things, then he'll cause all sorts of mischief and like, if you really fuck up, like you forget to leave out his Christmas porridge, then you know he might bring out the chainsaw. It's always fun when you're, you know, watching movies and then you go back and actually learn that it was a bit researched.
Speaker 1:That's the whole point of this podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe, but you know it's fun yeah it's very fun, I agree.
Speaker 1:So everyone check out, there's Something in the Barn, it's great. In the 19th century, the Nysa developed into gift givers and they are often portrayed to be similar to Santa in that way, bringing holiday gifts to family members. But dating back even before it was believed that Nysa brought your holiday presents, the Nordics believed that the Yule goat would deliver them.
Speaker 2:The Yule goat. Yes, what does the Yule goat look like?
Speaker 1:So the Yule goat would be sort of men who would dress up as this you know goat and walk through villages and towns and they would sing and perform skits.
Speaker 2:Skits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which of course we're also going to talk about a lot of different examples of this from many different cultures. But to set the scene, before Christmas not even became Christian, but before really it became so commercial very, very recently, like in the last 200 years, it was a raucous even again. Even throughout Christianity, christmas celebrations all the way from pagan times up to the 1700s were like incredibly raucous drunk festivals of eating and drinking and having sex and pranking people and doing crazy shit in the street and it gets, you know, even wilder from there in some cases. But that was really the vibe, so much that all of our cromwell banned christmas celebrations in england because they it was just like known of being this like shit show. It was just like that. It was almost like the purge.
Speaker 1:It was like when everybody just goes out and does whatever primal, primitive shit that they want to do and then amazon came around that's right and everything changed yeah, no one goes out anymore so we're going to talk a lot about that evolution today and a lot of other versions of what I'm saying, but I just wanted to set the scene a little.
Speaker 2:I mean, what Are you really going to go like out to buy dish soap?
Speaker 1:No, You're going to get it delivered in two days or less. So many people believe that the Yule goat is derived from either Thor, who is known for his goat drawn chariot, or from the ancient harvest traditions. This lore is especially prominent in Sweden, and there's actually a city in Sweden that builds this very, very large goat in the town a Yule Goat every year. Since it was built in the 1960s, it's been burned down 37 times.
Speaker 2:Okay, abby, yeah. What are the names of Thor's goats?
Speaker 1:Billy Nope, bobby Nope, joey Close and goats Billy Nope.
Speaker 2:Bobby, nope, joey Close and Ashley. Ashley, it's Snarler and Grinder.
Speaker 1:Snarler and Grinder.
Speaker 2:Snarler. Is that real? Yeah, wow, what do?
Speaker 1:they do, what's their vibe?
Speaker 2:They pull his chariot and one has a broken leg. Okay, actually, they have kind of a tough, tough life because every night Thor slays them Jesus, and eats them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But does not crack the bones for the marrow, okay. He just leaves all the bones in a nice little pile, okay. And then come dawn they regenerate, put themselves back together and then he's got new goats and these goats can fly, which is great because it pulls his cherry through the sky. But then fucking theolzy comes along and loki tricks him into cracking open one of the the bones to suck the marrow and he's like all sorry and shit. But now he's now one of the goats has a broken leg forever wow yeah it's sad, it's pretty sad.
Speaker 1:It's horrifying, especially for the's horrifying.
Speaker 2:Especially for the goats. Like, even with the broken leg, they're still going to regenerate now forever and just get eaten every single day. That sucks by their one guy that takes care of them.
Speaker 1:That's pretty shitty.
Speaker 2:It's pretty shitty.
Speaker 1:The Vikings celebrated Yule in their own way, quoting again from the All Things Interesting article. Quote the rites, ceremonies and festivities of Yule were rife with references to important gods of the old Norse and Germanic pantheons, most significantly Odin, one of whose names was Jolnir, which indicates a connection to the holiday of Jol or Yule. To ancient Vikings and Goths, the period prior to Yuletide was a time of heightened supernatural activity. Undead creatures, called a dragor, wandered the earth, magic was more potent and Odin himself led a ghostly wild hunt across the night sky. To appease restless spirits and gods alike, the Vikings held ceremonies that included sacrifices of various plants, animals and beverages. End quote the celebrations typically kicked off with Mother's Night, which included the sacrifice of a boar to the goddess Freya and her brother Freyr. Before tasting the meat, viking men would put their hands on the animal and swear oaths that ranged from very serious to very, very absurd and outrageous.
Speaker 2:What's an example of the absurd and outrageous.
Speaker 1:Like I hope, my hair goes pink next year.
Speaker 2:And everyone just kind of looks at you with blank stares. It's like you can do better.
Speaker 1:This oath swearing can be traced to modern day New Year's resolutions. No, I mean, I think everyone was so drunk because this was such a crazy festival that they just went for it.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me rephrase. If you had to make an oath on the goat, on the boar, excuse me what would your oath be? That's private board on the board, not the goat. What would you? What would?
Speaker 1:your oath be that's private, you have to do it in front of everybody, I would say. I hope everybody has a help, happy and healthy new year. There have been some claims that human sacrifice was also part of yule celebrations and this is actually a bit harder to confirm because many have tried to stamp out pagan festivals over the years so they had the kind of this like unfair, bad reputation, right Like when Christianity came they would be like oh, this is so horrible, these traditions, and violent, which wasn't always the case. So it's a bit hard to parse out totally accurately, but most, I think historians, or a lot of historians, speculate that there was certainly some of that.
Speaker 1:Also, as you might have guessed, evergreen trees were a big part of Yule celebrations. Bonfires were intended to keep the darkness away until the return of light in the warmer months. Similar to what we already discussed with evergreens is the Yule log. The Yule log tradition can be traced back to what is now the UK. The Yule log is a log, of course, that has been specially chosen to be burned for Yule. The Yule logs of tradition were so big that it took several days usually 12, for them to burn in entirety.
Speaker 2:No shit. Yeah, 12 days to burn a log.
Speaker 1:Right so you know, Like a tree, yeah, like these huge.
Speaker 2:Still 12 days.
Speaker 1:And they kind of timed it. I think there's like a 12, a recurring theme of 12 across a lot of these things, I feel like they've sacked entire cities in less time.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:But the purpose of burning the Yule log. Do you know what it was, alan?
Speaker 2:Warmth.
Speaker 1:To keep evil spirits and the sickness at bay.
Speaker 2:Wait, no, you said it was to make sparks, because they're animals.
Speaker 1:So that was the other thing that the sparks coming off of the Yule Logs. Every like sparks were good. It would be like this sign that all these baby sheep would be born next year. Right Like, the more sparks, the more baby animals would be born.
Speaker 2:Someone is just. They're just spritzing water onto it just to make sure they get nice. Lots of pops for those baby sheeps.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of connections to this tradition and the Christmas tree that decorates homes across the world to this day, including ours. Evergreen trees were brought inside homes and situated generally in the corners. They were decorated with cloth, food and other bits and bobs.
Speaker 2:You wanted so badly to put the Christmas tree in the middle of the room.
Speaker 1:Let's take a step back. First of all, it's a fake tree. Let's take a step back. First of all. It's a fake tree. Alan won't allow us to have a real tree in our home, which is horrifying because the whole point is that we are bringing in a piece of nature and an actual living evergreen. But we have our nice little New York City fake tree and I thought it would be nice to put it along the end of the couch, and I guess that was the stupidest thing I've ever said in my life.
Speaker 2:According to Alan, you can't walk through. You could not get to the couch yes, you could you had to shimmy between the tree and the tv to get to the couch it's a. It's a very small tree it was a very small apartment that's true.
Speaker 1:one of my favorite yuletide traditions was the wild hunt, or the belief in the wild hunt. It's no mistake that Yule is celebrated on the longest night of the year. For the Germanic people, Yule was a time to worship the gods Again. Odin actually translates to Yule. Father Odin was believed to lead a pack of ghostly huntsmen on black horses, bucks and demon-like hounds with haunted red eyes, and they would race through the night sky. I mean, it's the most rock and roll thing you've ever heard of. Those who kept watch at night for this spectacle would claim to see 20 or 30 huntsmen on the prowl. In the old Germanic times, Odin's role was god of the dead, and he led the hunt across the sky on his eight-legged horse Sleepnir Is that the name of his horse?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the name of his horse.
Speaker 1:Sleepnear.
Speaker 2:Sleepnear.
Speaker 1:Is he sleepy?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:What other pets does Odin have?
Speaker 2:He's got his two ravens.
Speaker 1:What are they named?
Speaker 2:Hugin and Mugin.
Speaker 1:What else? You know, a lot of Odin facts.
Speaker 2:I think it's just the ravens and the horse.
Speaker 1:The leader of this hunt shifts and changes over time, so it wasn't always historically Odin. Sometimes it was claimed that the devil was at the helm of the wild hunt. As Christianity was spreading across Europe, the hunt started to take an even darker spin, and I would actually argue that it was a horrifying one. It started to inspire visions of the undead and mass deaths. It's almost mind-blowing to think that this brutal hunt led by a death god is what has turned into the modern day story of Santa Claus and his friendly reindeer.
Speaker 1:Jacob Grimm repopularized the hunt in 1835 when he wrote about it in his Chronicle of German Mythology. Yule was one of many pagan celebrations and traditions that fell into Christian interpretation, generally a peacekeeping tactic during the rise of Christianity, which allowed for the pagan traditions to be preserved through the lens of the Christian faith. The idea was to mitigate the violent pushback from pagans and make the slow transition into Christianity more palatable. But before we talk about some of the very rock and roll creatures and horrifying monsters that have graced holiday folklore such as the Loch Ness Monster let's first discuss their foil, the history of St Nicholas.
Speaker 1:It's generally believed that St Nicholas hailed from what is now Turkey. His birthday is often thought to be March 15th, 270 AD, and he died on December 6th, 343 AD. And actually, just fun fact, today, as we record, this is December 6th.
Speaker 2:So Santa is officially dead.
Speaker 1:So, Alan, the way this works, the way history works, is that he died on December 6, 343.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's bad.
Speaker 1:So many, many thousands of years ago.
Speaker 2:I don't know if everyone knows this.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully people under five don't, but us adults can handle it. But this death day is very important because it's going to set the scene for a lot of other Christmas mythology that's going to follow, but for now, just remember that his feast is celebrated on his death date, december 6th. He's known as the patron saint of sailors, merchants, children, unmarried folks, toy makers and archers, just to name a few. Saint Nick was said to have traveled throughout the land giving away his money. Apparently he was quite well off to those in need.
Speaker 2:This is quite well endowed.
Speaker 1:He became the most popular saint in Europe. Saint Nick remained in good standing with Christians even long after the Protestant Reformation, and he was particularly well loved in Holland, which is another important detail. So there's actually this really weird piece of folklore to talk about with St Nicholas, and it has to do with three small children and a butcher. So the story goes that there was Sounds like a joke.
Speaker 1:It really is so bizarre. So the story starts off, as a lot of these kind of allegorical stories do, right that there's three small kids. They're playing around town, they're hanging out in a field, but they lose track of time. Then, when it's nighttime, sun's going down, they realize that they're starving and that they're lost. So as they're walking around, they come to a butcher shop which has a light on. They knock on the door and explain to the butcher what's going on, that they're lost, that they're hungry, that they need help, and the butcher says come on in. But as they enter, this evil butcher takes a sharp knife. He essentially slashes the children up and he wouldn't.
Speaker 1:And he salts them up as he would a piece of meat. Seven years go by by. Okay, so that happens.
Speaker 2:Seven years go by are they preserved the entire time?
Speaker 1:well, just keep it's a long time for even salted meat so seven years go by and saint nicholas wanders his way to this very butcher shop and he goes right to the salting, you know place where the children are kept and said, says like open it up. He puts his hand on top of the container, he prays, he says rise up children. And the kids are, how would he say it, rise up children. And the children do, they kind of become alive again and the families are like, thank god, our children are alive. And so a lot of people point to that as like one of the stories of when he's the patron saint of protecting children. But there's also other versions of that folklore where he is a little bit more evil. It's a little bit weird, but anyway, let's just leave it there to keep it nice and cheery for now.
Speaker 1:St Nicholas came to America by way of New York in December of 1773, when a reporter wrote an article on the Dutch tradition of honoring St Nicholas on December 6th.
Speaker 1:Right, so again December 6th is his feast day, the day of his death. Santa pulls part of his identity from both the Christian figure of St Nicholas and the pagan god Odin. To honor St Nick after his death in 343 AD, an annual day of gift giving to children was instated Again because he is, you know, the patron saint of children, originally the 6th of December, the day he died, which was later moved to December 25th after the Protestant Revolution, and Saint Nick was renamed Santa Claus. You can see the canvas that the pagan tradition of Odin presented and that the Christian traditions were painted on top of to create the modern story that we know today. The Dutch would call St Nicholas Sinterklaas, which is what led to us calling him Santa Claus Sinterklaas. Quoting from the Historycom article on Santa Claus quote In 1804, john Pintard, a member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of St Nicholas at the Society's annual meeting. The background of the engraving contains now-familiar Santa images, including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace.
Speaker 2:Fruit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:Get it roasty-toasty.
Speaker 2:Who roasts fruit?
Speaker 1:You do. You can't eat fruit raw.
Speaker 2:I also don't eat fruit roasted. You roast it like on a spit.
Speaker 1:We'll have to obtain the woodcuts and we'll confirm. In 1809, washington Irving helped to popularize the Sinterklaas stories when he referred to Saint Nicholas as the patron saint of New York in his book the History of New York. As his prominence grew, sinterklaas was described as everything from a rascal with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat and yellow stockings to a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a huge pair of Flemish trunk hose. End quote.
Speaker 2:What does trunk hose look like?
Speaker 1:They're pants.
Speaker 2:They're pants.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just pants.
Speaker 1:They're Flemish pants.
Speaker 2:Flemish pants.
Speaker 1:They're very elaborate.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And of course, we all know Washington Irving from his story the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's famous.
Speaker 1:Irving's reference to Santa was part of a movement to shift the core of Christmas celebrations Again. Hold the phone.
Speaker 2:I didn't, so just quick Washington Irving side sidebar here.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize until this Halloween that Sleepy Hollow was not called Sleepy Hollow until like the mid-90s.
Speaker 1:The town yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, isn't that crazy. It was like a fictional place and then they named it where he was inspired by.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:Just into the mid-90s. Imagine renaming a town based off a story from the 1800s. That's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:It's very fun.
Speaker 2:It is fun. It seems like it's a fun town.
Speaker 1:Life is short and you can't take anything too seriously. Irving's reference to Santa was part of a movement to shift the core of Christmas celebrations away from riotous debauchery, often including home invasion, premarital sex, public sexual deviancy and more Again, what I was referring to earlier. Most of this comes from traditions around these holiday celebrations, so let's talk about this tradition a little bit more right of being totally debaucherous. A lot of this happened under the umbrella of a way sailing, a term that is going to come up a few times in this episode.
Speaker 2:What was the term?
Speaker 1:Wassailing, wassailing, wassailing, way sailing.
Speaker 2:Way sailing or wassailing.
Speaker 1:Probably wassling, wassling. Wassling mostly means house visiting like caroling, if you will kind of.
Speaker 2:So there I was wassling.
Speaker 1:Peasants would bring a wassail bowl, offer a drink to the homeowner in exchange for gifts and food, so kind of, if you're wassailing or wassling, wassling, wassling. You're walking around with your wassail bowl and you're, you know, offering little sips and drips of liquor and whatever to homeowners. You're going house by house, but in some cases, right, there was kind of like this topsy turvy day celebrated around this time, I think, especially in ancient Rome, and peasants would go into the rich, you know, the homes of the rich and rob them and take their. It was like this backwards day.
Speaker 2:Fuck yeah, eat the rich.
Speaker 1:Like the purge a bit, but only against the rich. You gotta watch the purge. You got a lot of false assumptions. Who knew what a christmas movie it would turn out to be? Ancient rome was known for a similar festival. One week before the winter solstice, romans would celebrate saturnalia, named for the god saturn, with celebrations of food and drink. It's described as a wild and delirious time in a pagan origins documentary on YouTube. A time meant to turn the social order on its head. It would right. So the idea was that it was celebrating the disorder of the universe.
Speaker 2:Heck yeah.
Speaker 1:The more wealthy Romans had far more serious celebrations. They would worship Mithra, known as the god of the unconquerable sun. We talk about some of this on the Yule episode that we had a few years ago, I think in 2021. But to me this is like one of the most poignant parts of kind of understanding the very complicated history of this holiday. The birthday of Mithra, december 25th, was the holiest day of the year, so the birthday right of this unconquerable son, god, was December 25th.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:We know Jesus was born in the spring, but this is the exact.
Speaker 2:We know.
Speaker 1:Yes, and this is kind of the exact idea that, okay, christianity was spreading across Europe, there was an existing force, you know, layer of people who believed in these pagan holidays and traditions, one of them being worshiping the god, mithra, on December 25th. So instead of saying, you now worship Jesus. In the spring, they kind of very slowly reskin these holidays and festivals so that it's an easier pill to swallow right and there's less resistance to it. So Mithra was believed to have been born out of a rock and onto a field and shepherds had come to worship him. There's tons of ties here between this and the biblical origins of Jesus. At first, the resurrection of Jesus was actually much more important than his birthday, right? And that's what happens, I think, around Easter. Actually, I'm probably not the person to provide any information on Jesus's timelines, but I'm trying.
Speaker 2:I think there's a book about it.
Speaker 1:So we just looked it up and actually there's not a clear Jesus birthday in the Bible. There's some historical texts that lead us to believe that it was in the spring and sort of, because it was open-ended and because there was this existing massive holy holiday. You know, here we are, but fast forwarding a bit. By the 1820s it became common to buy Christmas gifts for your loved ones around the holidays, and by the 1840s some of those advertisements included imagery of Santa Claus, and the imagery of Santa Claus that we know today largely comes from Coca-Cola.
Speaker 2:Yeah, screw them.
Speaker 1:I mean, I do love a Coke.
Speaker 2:Ah, who doesn't? Another fun soda fact. So while we were seeing the hit movie Werewolves, we were at a theater that only had Pepsi products, so naturally I ordered a Dr Pepper.
Speaker 1:Because down with Pepsi really.
Speaker 2:And did you know that Dr Pepper is independently owned by the Dr Pepper Corporation? I did not. And it's bottled by Pepsi, but it's half owned by Coke. So it's really just this total chaos. Free agent that they normally associate with Pepsi, but you could find it anywhere.
Speaker 1:So we got root beer.
Speaker 2:We did get root beer In 1822,.
Speaker 1:Twas the Night Before Christmas. A poem by Clement Clark Moore was released.
Speaker 2:That's the one with the mouse right.
Speaker 1:That's right. The poem gave Santa his supernatural power, right when he flies to each child's house at night. He gets down their chimney somehow Like the poem really, I guess, creates the rules of Santa Claus as we know them today. I'm going to quote again from the historycom article. Quote in 1881, political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew on Moore's poem to create the first likeness that matches our modern image of Santa Claus. His cartoon, which appeared in Harper's Weekly, depicted Santa as a rotund, cheerful man with a full white beard, holding a sack laden with toys for lucky children. It is Nast who gave Santa his bright red suit trimmed with white fur. North Pole workshop elves and his wife, mrs Claus. End quote.
Speaker 2:He gave him his wife. Times were different.
Speaker 1:This evolution of Santa Claus runs parallel in some ways with the English folklore of Father Christmas. From the 1500s up until the 19th century, Father Christmas was a symbol and not a supernatural mythical entity, meaning he was sort of like an allegorical figure and not so much something that people really believed in.
Speaker 2:And what exactly did Father Christmas do?
Speaker 1:Good question, Alan. His main role was to bring cheer to parties and not bring gifts to kids.
Speaker 2:Wow. So he was like a hype man.
Speaker 1:Again, this was before Christmas as we know it today. Right, this was when Christmas was like let's get drunk. So a lot of what we're about to talk about now, which is a few different versions of kind of like these Father Christmas type beings. The idea was like that they presided over partying. This is mainly because Christmas celebrations up until this point were focused on adults and not families, you know, kids and gift giving and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those suck a historic york tradition around this time was called yule writings. It entailed a man dressed up as yule, as a personified what would that look like? Carrying meat and cakes through town and throwing nuts into the crowd and at onlookers get your nuts. I'm picturing it as like the last ghost in a christmas, a christmas carol, you know just like a kind of like a jolly man in like a robe who looks like a hunter kind of.
Speaker 2:I just imagine, like you know, sometimes he's, you know, throwing peanuts, sometimes it's like you know, walnuts, and every so often he sees someone he hates and he throws coconuts.
Speaker 1:In 1572, this tradition was banned because it caused too much drama and was too quote rude and barbaric. Yeah, he's chucking coconuts. We should also mention the Lords of Misrule.
Speaker 2:Wait, why does that sound so familiar?
Speaker 1:Because we have a body wash in our shower. Called that from Lush.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:Or known in Scotland as an abbot of unreason. So this was an official who was appointed during Christmas tide to rule over the Feast of Fools. Generally this appointment was given to a peasant and the results were quite debaucherous, right. So this is somewhat similar to what we just talked about for ancient Rome, where the peasants were given this power they would invade the homes of the rich. It's kind of the same idea, right. You always make the lord of misrule, who kind of gets to be in charge for a day, king for a day, as a peasant. Typically these traditions and similar ones of festivals around january 1st date back thousands of years. So the feast of fools is more aligned with january 1st. But again, all of this shit is so close together on the calendar it all has kind of shifted and combined into christmas as we know it today january 1st is the feast of fools, that's right it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2:How do we celebrate?
Speaker 1:so we celebrate by partaking in like role. Reversal right oh, a little role play we can elect a quote unquote mock leader. We can dress up in costumes. We can um exchange funny parodies of religious ceremonies oh um, we could dance, we could sing, could sing, we could take part in some lighthearted, very, very vanilla mischief. Such as I think that's for us to decide, but really what we want to do is embrace the spirit of temporary chaos.
Speaker 2:Temporary chaos Yep, okay.
Speaker 1:Should we start celebrating? I actually think this is quite fun it does sound pretty fun.
Speaker 2:We really got to flesh this out, though I really need some clarification on you know what is light mischief.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we're not going to hurt anyone, we're not going to kill anyone.
Speaker 2:Right, but it's like peanut butter, but maybe we'll toilet paper somebody's bathroom.
Speaker 1:Toilet paper someone's bathroom, yeah. Or, like we like, flip everyone's furniture upside down.
Speaker 2:Wow, I was thinking like peanut butter on a door handle. Is that too much?
Speaker 1:No, that's okay. I mean, it depends on the person.
Speaker 2:It's fucking dogs love it.
Speaker 1:Unless that dog has a peanut allergy.
Speaker 2:Does that happen with dogs? I have no idea, it's fucking dumb.
Speaker 1:What we do know is that on January 1st in the year 400 of our Lord, a bishop in modern day Turkey preached against the Feast of Calends. So a side note here Calends refers to the first day of the month in the Roman calendar, and it's where we get the term calendar from.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but anyway, the bishop took issue with the feast. His sermon talked about the mock king from antiquity and the tradition of the feast, which included children visiting different houses and exchanging gifts for rewards. Quoting from his sermon quote this festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy and accustoms them to go from house to house and to offer novel gifts, fruits covered with silver tinsel. For these they receive in return gifts double their value, and thus tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sorted. And then, jumping ahead in the quote a little bit, we celebrate the birth of Christ, since at this time God manifested himself in the flesh. We celebrate the feast of lights, epiphany, since by the forgiveness of our sins we are led forth from the dark prison of our former life into a life of light and uprightness, end quote. I also have one more quote for you from the Feasts of Misrule.
Speaker 2:Please go on.
Speaker 1:This one is from the 1600s in Tudor England. John Stowe wrote this in his Survey of London from 1603. Again, this is about the Feasts of Misrule Quote. In the feast of Christmas there was in the king's house, wheresoever he was lodged, a lord of Misrule or master of fairy disports and the like had ye in the house. Sorry, this isn't like old English, so bear with me.
Speaker 2:You just got to do the accent.
Speaker 1:And the like had ye in the house of every noble man of honor or good worship, and the like had ye For his spiritual or temporal. Amongst the which the mayor of london, in either of the sheriffs, had their several lords of misrule, ever contending without quarrel or offense, who should make the rarest pastimes to delight the beholders. These lords, beginning their rule on alholen eve, which is pointed out to be Halloween, continued the same till the morrow, after the Feast of Purification, commonly called Candlemas Day. In all which space there were fine and subtle distinguishes, masks and mummeries with playing at cards for counters, nails and points in every house, more for pastimes than for gain. End quote. The custom was banned in England in the 17th century.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:Because it was too chaotic Sounds fun.
Speaker 1:And in the 19th century there was a shift to more of a religious form of worship. We talk about this tradition a bit in our History of Yule episode from 2022, I guess which really goes into the pre-Christian pagan celebrations in a deeper way. I would suggest listening to both episode 52 and 92 for more on some of these topics. But let's talk about a creature who has become a figurehead for Christmas horror Rudolph. Traditionally across Austria's Alpine folklore and some parts of Germany, krampus was said to visit children on the night of December 5th, the day before the feast of St Nicholas. While well-behaved children will be rewarded with gifts and treats from St Nick, krampus was known to punish bad children Again get ready for this theme to recur over and over again.
Speaker 2:We had a whole Krampus episode, right.
Speaker 1:We did, but it was like episode five. It was horrifying.
Speaker 2:Was it over Christmas? Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. Many believe Krampus dates back to pagan times. In some ways Krampus is similar to Germany's Belschnickel, except that Belschnickel works alone, without Saint Nick hovering over his shoulder. So right, krampus and Saint Nick are sort of like a good cop bad cop sort of pairing. Belschnickel is a single, single man on his own. Belschnigel is all alone. That's right. Krampus is believed to be inspired by other earlier creatures, mainly Perchan and Straggle. Percha is a figure that fits in the same mold as many of these other holiday creatures do. On New Year's Eve, percha is said to roam around and punish those who have misbehaved and reward well-behaved folks. Quoting from the Atlas Obscura article, quote her punishment of choice involves slashing open your stomach so she may violently rip out your intestines, which are then replaced by straw, rocks and garbage.
Speaker 2:It sucks.
Speaker 1:The tradition of having goose for Christmas is sometimes linked to witches like Percha, who is often depicted as having a goose foot, along with the belief that goose fat enabled witches to fly.
Speaker 2:Is that true?
Speaker 1:It is true. In many places such as Switzerland, percha rides with a throng of demon-like helpers, known as straggle, who love to partake in the feast of offerings left out for them on Christmas by people hoping for Percha's blessings of wealth and health in the new year. In some places, straggle get to dole out the punishment themselves and aren't terribly discerning as they rob all bad children and tear them into pieces in the air end quote. So again, this is somewhat similar to this idea of Santa and his reindeer and leaving out treats for kind of the accompanying, you know, horde.
Speaker 2:I mean, I understand, but it sounds way more fun.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree, we can certainly celebrate anything we want in our household. Quoting from John J Honigman's 1975 Observations of Celebrations in Styria, quote the St Nicholas Festival we are describing incorporates cultural elements widely distributed in Europe. St Nicholas himself became popular in Germany around the 11th century. The feast dedicated to this patron of children is only one winter occasion in which children are objects of special attention Martinmus, the feast of the holy innocents and New Year's Day.
Speaker 1:Masked devils acting boisterously and making nuisances of themselves are known in Germany since at least the 16th century, while animal-masked devils combining dreadful comic antics appeared in medieval church plays. A large literature, much of it by European folklorists, bears on these subjects. Austrians in the community we have studied are quite aware of heathen elements being blended with Christian elements in the Saint Nicholas customs and in other traditional winter ceremonies. They believe Krampus derives from a pagan supernatural who was assimilated to the Christian devil end. Quote Belschnickel is similar to Krampus in some ways. He hails from a region of Germany in the southwest, along the Rhine River. Belschnickel is often depicted as a man who wears furs and a mask. Similar to Krampus, he is also depicted as having a long tongue a very creepy detail.
Speaker 2:So he has a mask and a long tongue.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Can you describe the mask then?
Speaker 1:So the idea is that he, I think, underneath his mask looks like a man and he wants to make himself scarier to children.
Speaker 2:So he looks like a dude with a really long tongue, but he puts on some kind of spooky mask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's tons of different kinds of variations. Some and some is described as a wooden mask bearing a friendly visage.
Speaker 2:I'm Googling Belschnickel. I don't know, Abby Belschnickel just kind of looks like a, like a drifter, you know, like it looks like very Rip Van Winkle-y.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, but he sometimes wears a mask to freak people out, and I think that can kind of depend on region to region or year to year. I understand.
Speaker 1:So similar to Krampus, he walks around with a switch in order to punish poorly behaved children. So some believe that Belschnickel is based on Farmhand Rupert, which is an even older story from Germanic folklore. Farmhand Rupert is an associate of St Nicholas. Rupert dates back to the 17th century in written texts and he was an incredibly popular figure locally but isn't broadly known outside of the region and you kind of get that where you have all these different versions and they're very like, hyper localized, but generally have very similar characteristics.
Speaker 1:Across the Holy Roman Empire and its surrounding regions the companions of Saint Nicholas were known to accompany Saint Nick and acted as foils to him, generally meant to punish poorly behaved children, while Saint Nick rewards well-behaved children with presents, and we can see how this, you know, is one of those parenting tools that is very easy and helpful. Firm hand Rupert generally wears a white robe, again a mask and a flax wig. Sometimes he is depicted as walking with a limp from a childhood injury In Italy, la Buffana, who shout out to my friend Allie, who introduced me to La Buffana.
Speaker 2:Why does it sound so familiar?
Speaker 1:Is a folklore witch, I don't know. She delivers gifts to children on epiphany night, the night of january 5th epiphany night. That's kind of fun she is depicted as a grandmotherly type woman, sometimes again described as a witch. Some sources describe her as filling up stockings with small gifts and trinkets. Not only does she fill socks with toys and gifts as they hang above the fire, but she also tends to clean up a bit before she leaves.
Speaker 2:So she's generally very helpful. That's great.
Speaker 1:But let's talk a little bit about the Feast of Epiphany, because I didn't know much or anything about it before researching this.
Speaker 2:Same.
Speaker 1:So this is a feast that celebrates the visit of the Magi or the wise men to the baby Jesus, or, in some cases, it's the celebration of the baptism of Jesus. It happens on January 6th traditionally.
Speaker 2:When was LBJ baptized?
Speaker 1:Little Baby Jesus. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, but it's just a feast commemorating that. It can also be known as Three Kings Day. The night before Epiphany Eve is also known as Twelfth Night Again, another reference to this 12. Celebrations can be marked with winter swimming, I guess, doing like a polar plunge, removing Christmas decorations, eating Three Kings cake or chalking the door.
Speaker 2:What is Three Kings cake?
Speaker 1:I actually only know what King's cake is, which is a New Orleans tradition. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had King's cake.
Speaker 1:King's cake is where they have the little figure of the baby in it, and then whoever gets that?
Speaker 2:yeah like what is it? It's a thing what if you get it? What happens?
Speaker 1:whoever finds the baby jesus figurine is blessed oh and they are supposed to, I guess, take the figure to the nearest church on candlemas day. So I guess it is kind of related to this interesting that it has prevailed in new orleans, of all places oh, I think it is just the same thing, just different terms and the other thing that they traditionally do is chalk the door, which um what's that? Just blessing the home oh, just well something on the door.
Speaker 1:That is like a blessing for the house big old pentagram yeah exactly the fauna is similar in some ways to babushka, who hails from russia and parts of eastern europe. These witchy figures are often to believe to have been derived from Mother Holly, which I had never heard of. Mother Holly is known for her huge teeth. She's also believed to be the kind of thing that causes snow by shaking out her feather pillows and bedding. And that's the thing that causes snow. It's disgusting. All right, I have another one for you, another kind of monster Christmas creature that I'm really excited to discuss.
Speaker 2:Okay, hit me. Let me guess it's Germanic.
Speaker 1:No, what Celtic and British?
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Mary Lude, the Christmas zombie horse, is a folk custom from Wales.
Speaker 2:Mary Lude, the Christmas zombie horse, just making sure I get that right. That's right, okay.
Speaker 1:In Celtic and British folklore, white horses were believed to be able to travel to the underworld, suggesting that the white color of this horse isn't arbitrary.
Speaker 1:Quoting from a whalescom article on the history of this folklore, quote the origins of Mary's name are, like the horse herself, deeply mysterious. One Welsh translation of it, grey Mare, connects it to the heritage of pale horses in Celtic and British mythology, many of whom can cross over to the underworld. The other translation for Marie Lude is Grey Mary. Some scholars have linked her to a legend connected to the nativity story, a pregnant horse sent out of the stables. When Mary arrived to have Jesus, she spent dark days roaming the land trying to find somewhere new to have a foal. Many Mary fans believe the character to have come from pre-Christian pagan origins. However, this is impossible to prove, but there's definitely something timeless and terrifying about her end quote. The first recording of the custom dates back to 1800 from J Evans' book A Tour Through Part of North Wales. In practice, mary Lude takes the form of a horse skull attached to a hobby horse pole and fitted with a white hood or sheet.
Speaker 2:And in case you aren't familiar with a hobby horse pole, just look up hobby horsing, because it's a whole sport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hilarious.
Speaker 2:Also, the pictures of the Christmas zombie horse are amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's very cool.
Speaker 2:People just like dressed up, you know, in like a traditional ghost costume with a big white bed sheet with an actual horse skull pointing out the front and someone leading them around by a leash like it's a fetish. Yeah, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wild, leading them around by a leash like it's a fetish. Yeah, it's kind of weird. Yeah, it's wild. The puppet is taken around the town along with other similar figurines, like a jester sometimes. This usually happens between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night, mary is dressed up in lights and colorful seasonal decorations. Each time she and her entourage arrive at a house, traditional songs are sung and a battle of wits takes place. Mary and her entourage try to gain entry to the home by exchanging rhyming insults with the residents. If mary wins, the house is thought to have good luck for the year to come.
Speaker 2:So you want to let her win how does, how does the competition work exactly?
Speaker 1:they come up to the house and the homeowners they kind of go back and forth with like it's like a roast, but it's like rhyming, a rap battle, if you will, a welsh christmas day rap battle okay, wits got it, but you got to let them win well, yeah, if you let her win, then you have good luck but is it obvious?
Speaker 2:like, can you just?
Speaker 1:I don't know the nuance of it, you know. I imagine it's more fun to put up a little bit of a fight absolutely.
Speaker 2:But then what if you put up too good of a fight?
Speaker 1:I know shit, shit there are also a few scandinavian monsters to mention. Gorilla hails from iceland and truly scares me to my core.
Speaker 2:Gorilla g-r-y-l-a okay, not a gorilla, not like the big primate no, I'll tell you about her.
Speaker 1:she is a giant angry troll who is always starving for children. On Christmas, she is known to come down from her mountainous home and hunt for children to eat, especially poorly behaved ones. Once she finds them, she throws them in a sack, brings them to the mountain, boils them and turns them into a stew. Her sons 13 of them are known as the Yule Lads.
Speaker 2:Yule Lads, they're just a bunch of Yule Lads, and I assume they're trolls as well.
Speaker 1:They are described as similar to Snow White's dwarves. The Yule Lads each have a special defining characteristic. Quoting from the Atlas Obscura article quote most of them are depicted as mischievous pranksters and petty criminals. Icelandic children are visited each night on the 13 days leading up to christmas by a different yule lad, including such charmers as sheep coat clog, a peg-legged sheep. Fancier sheep sheep, so what? You heard me? Gully hawk, who hides out in ditches and gullies and waits for an opportune moment to run into the cow shed and lick the foam off the milk in the milking buckets. Fuck Stubby, whose name denotes his stature as he is unusually short. Spoon Licker, a licker and thief of spoons.
Speaker 2:You fucking Spoon Licker.
Speaker 1:Pot Scraper, who is a petty thief of leftovers.
Speaker 2:These all sound like slurs.
Speaker 1:Bowl Licker, who hides under your bed and waits for you to absentmindedly put down your bowl so he can steal it and, yes, lick it.
Speaker 2:Why are you, why do you have a bowl in bed?
Speaker 1:Door slammer. That's you who slams doors all night. Skier gobbler who eats skier yogurt. Sausage swiper who steals sausage. Window peeper who watches you from the windows doorway sniffer okay, you've just.
Speaker 1:Every one of these, with very few exceptions, has described a normal dog doorway sniffer who uses his incredibly large nose to sniff through doors to find bread meat hook. Who always brings a hook along with him so that he can steal meat, and candle stealer who follows children so that he can steal meat. And Candle Stealer who follows children around so he can steal their candles, leaving them in the dark end. Quote Wow, that's like one of my favorite bits of new information in this episode the Yule Lads. I think we should celebrate them leading up to Christmas. This year, 13 days of the Yule Lads.
Speaker 2:It's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:Except we don't have any cows to like eat the froth of.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the whole point.
Speaker 1:If we did, then Right, we have to go to somebody else's house. We have to be wary. I see.
Speaker 2:Hold on, he licked the froth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why is that bad?
Speaker 1:Because it's not his froth. I don't know. I think maybe the top is the froth, did they? Turn it into like cream or something.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you let it sit, cream rises to the top.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he's probably eating the cream.
Speaker 2:Okay, I remember this was just like some like old school grandparent shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where you know whoever got up. I remember my grandfather saying you know he grew up with five siblings and you know whoever got up early to bring in the milk. Because you had the milk delivery guy Right, they could pop it open and they could just drink the cream off the top, and then everyone else in the family would be really mad because the cream was gone. Yeah, and it was just like what skim milk at that point.
Speaker 1:No, then it's just like. I guess I don't know how milk works, just regular milk.
Speaker 2:No, well, it's skim. So whole milk is just when it's been homogenized.
Speaker 1:So that's when the cream and the skim has become milk, I think. They even it out.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't, you know, I'm not really up on my milk facts yeah it's. I mean, I have a degree in milkology, but it's from the University of Phoenix.
Speaker 1:And we also have to mention the Yule Cat, the known pet of Grilla and her Yule lads. The Yule Cat doesn't care if you've been naughty or nice. It will only refrain from eating you if you offer a new piece of clothing each Christmas.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. New sweaters.
Speaker 1:So those are the new Christmas friends that we've met this year and we're excited to celebrate, but there's also a Victorian era tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve, which is my favorite thing to remind people of every holiday season.
Speaker 2:You say so, but then we just keep coming back to a Christmas carol, and it's like what else is there to say?
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about it. This is not random at all.
Speaker 2:Sounds pretty random.
Speaker 1:The folk tradition dates back hundreds of years across Europe, but because the Puritans were opposed to it, it didn't come to America in a meaningful way. So this was a big deal, right, this was a big part of this time of year across Europe and it just never really made it over here. There are even references to this tradition in the works of Shakespeare, in the Winter's Tale, when Mammalus claims he is the perfect winter story to tell of spirits and goblins. Even one of my favorite ghost stories of all time, the Turn of the Screw by Henry James, frames the story using Christmas Eve, does it? So the story starts right. The frame of the story is literally a group of men who are telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 2:And they're telling the story of the Turn of the Screw. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And so the turn of the screw is like, famously an ambiguous story. Right, it's always the story people point to when we look back at the trope, this ghost story trope of is the person delusional or is it paranormal?
Speaker 2:It's the unreliable narrator.
Speaker 1:Right, and one of the reasons why people will argue that it is actually, you know, paranormal is because it's being told as a ghost story.
Speaker 2:I gotcha, but the story itself has nothing to do with Christmas.
Speaker 1:Just the frame.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Quoting from the Smithsonian Magazine article by Colin Dickey. Quote At the same time that the tradition of Christmas ghosts had begun to ossify, losing the initial spiritual charge that drove its popularity, a new tradition was being imported from across the Atlantic, carried by the huge wave of Scottish and Irish immigrants coming to America. Halloween the holiday, as we know it, is an odd hybrid of Celtic and Catholic traditions. It borrows heavily from the ancient pagan holiday, samhain, which celebrates the end of harvest season and the onset of winter. As with numerous other pagan holidays, samhain was, in time, merged with the Catholic festival of All Souls Day, which could also be tinged towards obsessions of the dead into Halloween, a time when the dead were revered, the boundaries between this life and the afterlife were thinnest and when ghosts and goblins ruled the night. End quote. So yes, alan, I am going to talk a little bit about A Christmas Carol, because it is, in fact, the most famous Christmas story of all time and the most famous ghost story of all time.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's the most famous Christmas story?
Speaker 1:I think it's one of them.
Speaker 2:I would say that would be the story of the birth of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, it actually makes a lot of sense that this story is both, though. A Christmas Carol was written almost 200 years ago and it still endures to this day. Names like Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit still mean something to modern-day folks, which I think is quite the feat, right? It's rare.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it was all but forgotten until the Muppets came around.
Speaker 1:The ghosts of Christmas past, present and future still remain relevant. This is partially due to remakes and retellings of A Christmas Carol across mediums, for instance, the Muppets Christmas Carol from 1992 and more than 100 other renditions, and at least 20 TV shows have used the format for episodes right, so they kind of have their own spin on the same format.
Speaker 2:That might be Michael Caine's best work.
Speaker 1:I don't disagree. Charles Dickens was born into a middle-class family in 1812, and his father was taken to a debtor's prison by the time that he was 12 years old. Dickens was forced to sell his beloved collection of books as a way to bring in money for his family, and he also had to drop out of school and start work at this very rat-infested shoe-blacking factory where they made shoe polish. As an adult, dickens became a fairly prolific author. Many biographers attribute his creative drive to the hard times he experienced in his early life. A Christmas Carol was not his first story about the holiday. In 1835, his story Christmas Festivities was published, and it was republished a year later with the name A Christmas Dinner so lame festivities was published and it was republished a year later with the name a christmas dinner so lame.
Speaker 1:The story of the goblins who stole a sexton was published in 1863 as well, which some believe to be an earlier version of a christmas carol. But either way it shows you right, the popularity of christmas ghost stories that he's. He's writing many of them every year. In october of 1843, dickens started to write write A Christmas Carol. He finished writing it in six weeks, finishing up the last pages in early December of 1843. Famously, he originally composed much of the story in his head while he took up to 20 mile walks at night. Dickens' sister in law wrote how he quote wept and laughed and wept again and excited himself in the most extraordinary manner in composition, end quote.
Speaker 1:The story was originally published on December 19th with the title A Christmas Carol in Prose being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Despite a somewhat expensive price of five shillings each, the 6,000 original first edition copies sold quickly. More editions were printed and sold over the next year and legal battles over the copyright sprang up. But Dickens won them, and there's actually something to be said here about the innovations around this time in the printing press, Because up until this point you have people who have this tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. Right, but it's all word of mouth, like the same stories your family would always tell, and that's kind of how they travel through the community and through time and generations.
Speaker 2:Right, because everyone's illiterate.
Speaker 1:And then when you get the invention of the printing press or you know the kind of these industrial revolution technologies, you can then make money off of this because it has this nostalgic interest, right, people want to own this thing that they've kind of grown up listening to.
Speaker 2:Wait, interest, right, people want to own this thing that they've kind of grown up listening to. Wait a minute. You're saying somebody would commercialize nostalgia.
Speaker 1:You're right, that seems unlikely. So that actually has a lot to do with kind of solidifying this practice and shifting it into something different, right? Because even before that and then even after that, there's, you know, listening to stories on the radio, because that's all people had. It was, it was all very oral. Dickens was 31 years old at the time of publication. For Dickens, a Christmas Carol was more than just a spooky holiday ghost story. The story is rich in social commentary, which makes sense given what we know about his life.
Speaker 2:That's right. It was also a giant paycheck.
Speaker 1:He was often reflecting on the vast delta between classes and those living in poverty. But despite all of this, dickens was unable to convince Mark Twain of his story. Dickens came to the US to read his own story to audiences. He is credited as the first writer to do this. Mark Twain had this to say, quote there is no heart, no feeling. It is nothing but glittering frostwork. End quote.
Speaker 1:Though perhaps the association between holiday cheer and horror seems out of place in modern times, it's actually perfectly aligned when we really dig into the sprawling and varied history of this time of year, from allegorical Christmas monsters meant to scare children into good behavior throughout the year to the tradition of exchanging scary stories on Christmas Eve. Generally, december and January have not only been the coldest and darkest periods of the year for Western cultures. It's also been a time of year filled with festivals and holidays dating back to the earliest of pagans. So how does all this translate to modern day horror? There are really only a few Christmas horror movies that I can think of that really honor the folklore and tropes that they are inspired by.
Speaker 2:That's just because you haven't done your research.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll let you chime in, but obviously one that comes to mind for me is Krampus from 2015, which stars Adam Scott and Toni Collette. It's a great example of kind of, in a very meta way, acknowledging the history of this folklore and, you know, it's kind of the grandmother who's from the old country brings it about. Rare exports is also a really good example of this. In this case, it brings Finnish folklore to life. And then, of course, you have Christmas horror films that simply play with a juxtaposition of horror and Christmas cheer For instance, anna and the Apocalypse from 2017, gremlins from 1984, it's a Wonderful Knife from 2023, and Black Christmas from 1974. But, alan, we did watch quite a few Christmas horror movies and you watched many.
Speaker 2:What was the one with the animatronic Santa?
Speaker 1:Christmas, Bloody Christmas yeah that was cool. Yeah, that one's a good one.
Speaker 2:That's a good, solid horror movie. It's a fun romp of a slasher that uses Christmas as the perfect, needed horror trope of why the fuck is nobody else around Sure, and why can't I just call for help Because it's Christmas. No one's taking you seriously In this case. You know there's an animatronic Santa just rampaging.
Speaker 1:I would argue that films like that are playing with Christmas Less of like a mechanic to eliminate the ability for people to help, but more so to create this huge delta between what this day should be and what it has turned out to be.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely so. You know, christmas, bloody Christmas, is just a solid holiday horror movie. However, we just watched Red Snow, and so that is a Christmas vampire movie. Yes, and that is the perfect example of no one's around, because they're all away for Christmas, and that is why the person is left to deal with this all on their own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think Better Watch Out is also like a somewhat similar version. It's not taking people away, but, like you know, the parents are at a holiday party and I don't know that one, I think, particularly plays with the Delta a bit, because it's also. I don't want to give anything away about it because I think it's an interesting watch, but it also, I think, is trying to just, every step of the way, surprise you yes, and it does such a good job of it yeah, so much so that I I'm kind of uncomfortable with it it's amazing, it's a great movie.
Speaker 2:Don't listen to it all uh, but I did what I never do and I read the description of the film in the little thumbnail before you.
Speaker 1:You watched it. Yes.
Speaker 2:And even with that, they subvert your expectations.
Speaker 1:So well, it's good marketing. It was great Because you really think you know what's going to happen. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It seems like a very paint by numbers and it is not.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was Better Watch Out from 2016. The whole reason why we decided to do this again was that I feel like in the last few years they have just pumped out so, so many christmas horror movies a thousand percent it really started in like 2015 yeah maybe I mean there's.
Speaker 2:There's ones from before, that for sure, but starting in 2015 and then 2016 and 17 really exploded and you know we did our episode. We watched a bunch of those but then, just like the last couple of years, so many have come out. Earlier we mentioned there's Something in the Barn and that one is like, rife with mythology and is a perfect Christmas horror movie. We also finally got around to watching Gremlins. Despite the fact that it's like a staple of this topic, it's very much a horror movie that's not very scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like a horror movie for kids.
Speaker 1:It's a creature feature.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's gentle, yes, but it's actually kind of terrifying. You know just how quickly things get out of control. Yeah, things get out of control, yeah, uh. However, I will say that the mom in gremlins is one of the. I just love when you have like smart protagonists. Yes, she's great everyone's like, you know disbelieving, you know being like hey little guy, what are you up to?
Speaker 1:but she immediately goes into murder mode my favorite moment is when she grabs a knife and then pauses and grabs a second knife. Yeah, it's, it's great uh, she is we.
Speaker 2:We love a smart protagonist. Yes, she and in ripley should just go to town on the, the, the for the gremlins xenomorph crossover there you go.
Speaker 1:Violent night is also a pretty good like standard horror slasher movie. I liked that one quite a bit. I also want to call it, of course, tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas from 1993, which I know a lot of people debate when is the appropriate time of year to watch it? I argue that it's a Christmas movie, doesn't have to be for you, but I think it just makes sense to kind of watch it once you've, you know, when you're in the middle of the holidays, versus on either end of it. Hosts from 2020. I also really really love the Lodge from 2019, which is not cheerful, or you know. I think a lot of these Christmas horror movies have this like upbeat cheerful energy that you, you know, kind of expect around Christmas time or in a Christmas horror film. The Lodge from 2019 is not that at all. It is bleak and depressing and horrifying, but I like that.
Speaker 1:There's something that's a little bit different in this list the Curse of the Cat People from 1944, speaking of things that are a bit different. And then, of course, you have the Sacrifice Game from last year, which is from our friends, directed by Jen Wexler and, I believe, written by Sean Redlitz and Jen Wexler. We love it a lot. We think it's really really great and one of the Christmas horror films on this list, I think that surprises you and plays with stuff that's like a little bit different from being hyper holiday driven, which is really fun. And just in general, I enjoy snow horror. You know, like winter horror because I think there's something you know. Obviously the Shining is such a great example of that but I think there's something very isolating and universal about being snowed in, losing power, being stuck somewhere, being stuck somewhere without food or you know, access to things that can be, you know, really, that can be really powerful as a mechanic to add in a horror movie.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, when people are isolated, it's just another great mechanic for why people can't leave.
Speaker 1:Right. And then if you introduce something paranormal or whatever, or a slasher, a villain, things get crazy.
Speaker 2:You know, in all these juxtaposed over the like, the warm, wholesome idea of christmas, like that's horror in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:You want to take something comfortable and make it very uncomfortable yeah, yeah, exactly okay, alan, if people are going to go out and watch one christmas horror film after listening to this, what do you suggest?
Speaker 2:if you're looking for something with some holiday cheer, I would say Christmas, bloody Christmas. If you want something steeped in some good lore, sorry. If you want something steeped in accurate lore, go for Something's in the Barn If you want to. You know, maybe learn a thing or two. Hell yeah, something's in the barn if you want to. You know, maybe learn a thing or two. Oh yeah, if you don't care about accurate lore and just love lore, right. Uh, check out krampus from 2015. I don't think it's a uh canonically accurate krampus, but holy crap, is he cool. Uh, one of my favorite movie monsters yeah yeah, nice.
Speaker 2:If you're looking for something Christmassy but also just like a very unique movie, check out it's a Wonderful Knife. Please have watched it's a Wonderful Life beforehand because it's needed, but regardless, it's a great film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the two that I would just throw in there as well would be Rare Exports from 2010 is so good, very, very unique, and again, it's Finnish folklore, so it's something if you haven't seen. I think it'll be net new to a lot of people. It's not folklore that is very broadly understood. And the other one that I'll mention is Anna and the Apocalypse from 2017, which is so fun. It is a musical zombie Christmas movie. The music's actually really, really good.
Speaker 1:I saw it in theaters when it came out and it's one of those films that has stuck with me and I think it's a great, great, great film, super fun to watch. It feels festive and terrifying and if you like musicals, it's a no-brainer. Well, my friends, happy holidays for those who celebrate and, if not, and for those who don't. I hope you have a cozy and warm winter season, as is the tradition of the folklore that we have talked about today, we are going to present four spooky holiday themed stories for you that will come out right before Christmas Eve, so that you can take part in the age old tradition of listening to some friends tell Christmas ghost stories on Christmas Eve. Thank you so much for being here and we'll talk to you in a few weeks.
