Christmas nowadays tends to revolve around family, food and a furtive visit from a pot-bellied stranger down the chimney. But in The Dead of Winter, the historian and folklorist Sarah Clegg reveals a lesser known side to the festive season, unearthing unsettling midwinter traditions and stories that fell out of favour in the Victorian age.
Subtitled The Demons, Witches and Ghosts of Christmas, the book opens with Clegg embarking on a pre-dawn walk to a graveyard on Christmas Eve. She is recreating an old Swedish tradition called årsgång, or “year walk”, which is said to offer glimpses into the walker’s future along with “shadowy enactments of the burials of anyone who will die in the village this coming year”.
Elsewhere, Clegg tells of horned figures rampaging through the streets in Salzburg on Krampus night; dawn solstice rituals at Stonehenge; and horse’s skulls mounted on sticks in Chepstow, their cloaked carriers engaging in a battle of rhyming insults. There are chilling stories of an Icelandic ogress who kidnaps people and turns them into stew as her Yule cat looks on, and witches who find children who haven’t done their chores, cut open their bellies and stuff them full of straw.
The narrator is Antonia Beamish, who delights in the mischief and menace of these outre seasonal happenings. In the 19th century, Christmas became a more sedate, domestic affair as a twinkly figure based on Saint Nicholas caught the public imagination. But, as Clegg notes, “look a little closer, you’ll find that Christmas teems with monsters”.
Further listening
Night People
How to Be a DJ in ‘90s New York
Mark Ronson Penguin Audio, 6hr 56min
The celebrated music producer blends memoir and cultural history as he embarks on a nocturnal journey around his native New York. Ronson documents the city’s thriving club scene where he found his calling as a DJ. Read by the author.
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Arundhati Roy, Penguin Audio, 11hr 28min
The author of The God of Small Things reads her memoir about her complicated relationship with her mother, Mary, an avowed feminist who fought for women’s rights but rarely had a kind word for her children.
