Before Christmas: The Figures That Ruled the Dark Winter

SPEAKER_01 0:03 Christmas is an interesting time of year, a celebratory time full of fun and laughter that comes in the depths of winter. A season that would have been full of fear, food scarcity, and even deadly for our ancient ancestors. Yeah, we're fine in our central heated homes.

SPEAKER_02 0:21 But our ancestors? They'd have been fighting the cold, searching for shelter, struggling to even hunt for food.

SPEAKER_01 0:29 So, how did so much joy come from a time which would have been far from joyful for most of human history? I'm Ollie.

SPEAKER_02 0:37 And I'm Matt. And this is What We Did Before, the podcast where we chart the history of modern inventions.

SPEAKER_01 0:44 Now, Matt, for a what we did before Christmas episode, you might think we'd be going down the whole Christmas used to be a pagan tradition route. Which is, of course, real, that is a thing, and it's part of it, but there is so much more pre-Christmas history to explore besides, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03 Yeah, totally. We're gonna be exploring all of our pre-Christmas history. What was winter like in Europe for the early humans who migrated there from Africa? What did we do before we'd invented any sort of winter's holiday celebration?

SPEAKER_01 1:18 Yeah, we'll delve into Saturnalia, uh, Yule, and how at one point, if someone knocked on your door, it was less likely to be a joyful choir singing lovely festive songs, and probably a troop of rowdy drunkards heckling you. Uh, and that was all before the Victorians reinvented Christmas to uh, you know, what we sort of know it as today. But first, I'd like to explore how much of the Christmas folklore we celebrate today, actually started out as quite frightening stories of mischievous monsters.

SPEAKER_02 1:51 Yeah, so whatever you'll be doing this winter and whether you celebrate Christmas, another winter holiday, or none at all, let us take you back to a time when Christmas, a holiday which very nearly didn't even become a thing, was not the most wonderful time of the year.

SPEAKER_01 2:09 A quick warning before we get stuck in. I just want to say, for obvious reasons, this is not an episode to watch or listen to with young children. Anyway, let's start by discussing the creepy side of pre-Christmas and the many predecessors of the big man himself, Father Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 2:27 Yeah, so Father Christmas has had many predecessors throughout the ages. Before the jolly, full-bellied man we know and love today, there have been a variety of characters throughout folklore who've taken on the job of judging the naughty and the nice. Usually they weren't quite so forgiving.

SPEAKER_01 2:48 Yeah, um there's some really great examples. I mean, the Yule Lads, for one, uh which is this folkloric tale from Iceland. And so these were 13 mischievous ogre boys, uh, or sort of mountain dwelling characters who would come to town at Christmas, and they were the sons of Gryla and Lepatheo. So Gryla is a female ogre, or an ogress, if you will, and she likes to cook naughty children in a big pot and eat their flesh. Uh Lepothilo is um, if I'm getting that right, is her lazy troll husband. So as far as I could read from my research, he's just sort of lazy and doesn't do anything.

SPEAKER_02 3:28 Yeah, well, um, I can't speak for Lep Lepo Lepophilo, yeah. I I don't know how to pronounce that, but uh Grylo um has some Santa vibes going on. Well, the naughty children thing at least. And what about her sons then?

SPEAKER_01 3:45 Yeah, I maybe a stretch to say she's got Santa vibes. I guess she does judge the naughty, but beyond that, I'm not sure how often Santa's cooking and eating children. But the Yule lads, the apple doesn't fall that far from the tree. This group of 13 mischievous pranksters uh basically steal from or harass the general population. So they come to town one by one during the last 13 nights before Yule, and then they leave small gifts in the shoes of children. So children would place these shoes on windowsills and sort of await the gifts of the Yule lads. That sounds all nice. But if the child was disobedient or had been disobedient throughout the year, they instead left a rotten potato in the shoe.

SPEAKER_02 4:27 Yeah, okay. So already we can see some similarities in a way to current Christmas, obviously, um with uh a piece of coal in the stocking. It's a little different, but um at least these uh Yule lads don't eat them. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 4:43 But they do have a pet who does. Oh, okay. Yeah, so these ogres have a pet cat, the Yule Cat, uh, which is a huge, vicious cat that eats people. And why does the Yule cat eat people? Well, specifically, he eats those who've not received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve. Oh that seems fair. Yeah, it's uh capitalism at its finest. But in modern times, uh I think these have all turned into somewhat more benevolent figures, uh a bit more like Father Christmas over the years. Uh in fact, actually, they they literally officially banned using these myths to instill fear in children in 1746. So woke.

SPEAKER_02 5:30 Yeah, yeah, we need to go back to pre-1746, in my opinion. Yeah, when we had proper Christmas. Um but even if we look at sort of old Norse god mythology, the god Odin, known as the All Father, he seems to have been somewhat of a Santa figure himself. All Father Christmas, if you will. Such a highlight of my day when you speak to me, Ollie. Um so the All Father Christmas Odin, um during during the during the Yule festival, um, he was said to lead a ghostly procession, and this was called the Wild Hunt. And this is when Odin was um flying through the sky on his eight-legged horse, Slapneer. And children would leave food for Slapneer in their boots or stockings, and Odin would reward them with gifts.

SPEAKER_01 6:29 Oh, okay. So the wild hunt could sort of be an origin story for uh the Christmas stocking, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 6:35 Yeah, yeah. And we can also see, I think, some uh similarities to other Christmas traditions around the world with the putting gifts in shoes as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:45 So Or leaving a mint pie out for Santa, um because he's sort of rewarding them with the gift of the for the food in the their boots. Although I imagine that food would be quite rank after having been in the sh in the shoes of children who at that time in history probably wouldn't have have had loads of pairs of shoes.

SPEAKER_02 7:04 Yeah, yeah, I imagine so. And they probably didn't clean them super regularly either.

SPEAKER_01 7:10 Poor Odin's going around, he's got terrible stomach aches.

SPEAKER_02 7:14 Well, it was food for the horse, so he probably didn't mind. Oh, that's true. Poor Satan. I suppose people kids leave carrots, I think, out for reindeer, right? Yeah. So, you know, more similarities there. So but with the wild hunt, so apparently the hunters usually consisted of the souls of the dead, ghostly dogs, demons, fairies, vulcaries, and elves. Not scary at all. And there's actually a famous ore painting from 1872 by Peter Nikolai Arbo depicting the scene.

SPEAKER_01 7:52 Yeah, it's an amazing image. It's really dark and foreboding. It's not Christmassy at all, though, is it?

SPEAKER_02 7:58 I mean, it depends on your view of Christmas. Maybe for some of us, this is a good visualization of the chaos.

SPEAKER_01 8:06 That's such a good point, actually. If you want to see uh a sort of a representation of the madhouse that is your uh family gathering at Christmas, just search this picture. Um so I wonder if Sleep near this is completely stupid, but I wonder if Sleep near is where we get sleigh bells. No.

SPEAKER_02 8:27 It's it's possible if we have the all Father Christmas and sleep near, then you know the Norse gods they had proto Christmas rites all along, I think.

SPEAKER_01 8:40 Yeah, exactly. Um they did it, they did it the dark way, the heavy metal way, which we'd love to revisit. There are there are less frightening figures that led to Father Christmas, though. That was sort of you know the origin of Santa as we know him. Obviously, Saint Nicholas of Myra is the main one. Yeah, good old Saint Nick. Yes, so um he was a fourth century Greek bishop from modern-day Turkey. So Nick Nicholas Nick, um, I don't know if I'm on first name basis with him. Um Saint Nick, he was known for his generosity, uh particularly towards children and the poor. And um, you know, stories of his secret gift giving led to the European figure of Syntaclaus in the Low Countries, uh which is where the Americans got Santa Claus, basically, that's how they derived the name Santa Claus. And because of this uh tradition, you know, eventually over the years, gifts became uh traditionally exchanged on the eve of St. Nick's Feast Day, which is December the 6th.

SPEAKER_02 10:37 Yeah, and while it's not a tradition anymore in our country, it's celebrated as a staple of the festive season throughout many, particularly European, countries, with names such as Mikawiki in Poland, and usually this involves kids finding small gifts in their shoes or stockings, so like we said earlier. So quite a pleasant and positive tradition still.

SPEAKER_01 11:02 But over the years, um Santa has actually he became paired with darker, more frightening figures. I thought we were over the frightening ones. Not quite, unfortunately. So the night before St. Nick's feast day on December the 6th, um, folklore in Europe tells of a frightening, horned, half-goat, half-demon monster who emerges to punish naughty children. And he's known as the Krampus. Um, I actually watched this comedy horror film uh called The Krampus back in 2015 with my sister, and it was um it was the first time I'd ever heard of The Krampus, actually, and it was just so stupid and just like this ridiculous. I mean, I didn't realise at the time that it was a comedy horror, I thought it was just a hot horror, and so I had sort of weird, um, skewed expectations of it. I actually really loved it, but it was just so silly.

SPEAKER_02 11:58 I yeah, I remember seeing this. I I never watched it, but I remember seeing it, I think, in HMV or something, and I thought it looked ridiculous. Yeah, it was. So um, since you've seen the movie, um what I don't know if it's biblically accurate, but crampers from the Bible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:23 Um so what is his usual form of punishment then? So um the form of punishment in the film I do think differs from what he's best known for. Um he likes to beat children with rods of birch. Um and the really badly behaved ones, um, he doesn't just like beat them more, he carries them straight into hell in a basket that he wears on his back.

SPEAKER_02 12:49 I mean, it seems fair to me.

SPEAKER_01 12:51 Yeah, I mean, you know, I I just use it as a gentle threat to my children these days, so it's all it's all good. It's all in jest, isn't it? I'm gonna carry you straight to hell.

SPEAKER_02 13:01 You you have mentioned Krampus to your children though, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01 13:05 Yeah, and I think it's you know it's fine. They're five and two, and I think they need to know about these days.

SPEAKER_02 13:12 Yeah, well, as we said earlier, we need to go back to the pre-1700s wokeification of Christmas, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 13:20 I I'm not I'm not woke. Um but actually um the Krampus will still be quite well known in some parts of the world because um, like in the Alpine regions, for instance, places like Austria and Bavaria, they still celebrate Krampuslauf uh on the 5th of December. And this is basically a parade or a procession where people dress up as the Krampus and they dance and make loads of noise. It kind of sounds fun. I mean, the masks, you know, they each have their own different interpretation, and so it's quite frightening. I wouldn't be taking my children, but you know, I've got pictures here from Krampus Slough, and there are kids everywhere, so I think it's okay to teach my kids about the wicked old Krampus.

SPEAKER_02 14:02 Yeah, yeah. I'm not judging at all, and I don't have kids, so I can't say what's good parenting, and obviously it's also dependent on what they grow up with. Um a lot of the things maybe seem strange to us because we are used to a certain type of Christmas and it being all very, you know, marketable and nice, but this is this is Christmas for them. This is a big part of it, right? And also in Alpine folklore, they have Frau Perchter, um, and she is particularly active during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany. She's a winter goddess, sometimes called the Christmas witch, or very nicely the belly slitter. And this is all very festive so far. So festive, yeah. I hope you're feeling joyful this season. It is the season for slitting bellies, apparently. Um so she judges whether people have been good and hard working, and for those, she will reward them for being virtuous while punishing the lazy and disobedient by can you guess, disemboweling them and filling their bodies with straw and stones.

SPEAKER_03 15:11 Oh God.

SPEAKER_02 15:13 Yeah what's wrong with these people? Well, there are nice witches associated with Christmas too. Good. So you you've got Labafana in Italian folklore, and she is a kind witch. She flies on her broomstick on the eve of the Epiphany, which is January the 5th, to deliver gifts to children. And legend says that she was invited by the wise men to see the baby Jesus, but she was too busy. I don't know what could possibly be more important, but um she now forever searches for the Christ child and leaves gifts along the way.

SPEAKER_01 15:53 It's uh a bit too late for that, I'm afraid. I mean, yeah, what what could you unless you didn't think that he was going to be the son of God, um, it would be quite a you know, there's got to be something very important that's going on to miss that. I was too busy. Do you think I can still make it? It's only been what 2,000 years. Um, there's also Dead Moroz, also known as Grandfather Frost in Slavic and Russian folklore. And so Dead Moroz is a uh winter wizard who brings gifts on New Year's Eve, and he's often accompanied by his granddaughter Snegurochka, the snow maiden, and his origins also predate Christianity as a uh Slavic supernatural figure of winter. So um Santa figures are sort of everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 16:37 Yeah, and we're already seeing a lot of the foundations for the traditions that we have now with gift giving, with Santa flying on his sleigh and delivering gifts, you know. Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 16:52 I I wonder though, um it seems that across the world, uh at least in the regions that we've spoken about so far, that there's this sort of desire for folkloric tales like this, and to have these figures, whether they are good or bad, or punish people or give gifts, whatever the case might be, it does seem like as humans we really want to create these figures. But don't you think it's weird that we have these folkloric figures at all, especially the violent ones?

SPEAKER_02 17:21 Well, yeah, but there's a good reason all of these were developed after around 800 BC. Yeah. Because for our ancient ancestors, they likely didn't have time to come up with all of these fables. As we'll explore in other episodes, our ancient ancestors, of course, evolved in much warmer climates. So to make them move out of Africa and Asia, they needed to start fashioning shoes and clothes to protect them from the cold.

SPEAKER_01 17:49 Yeah, so it's interesting because all of these figures emerging at that time clearly shows that we made a shift culturally and as a civilization because we had the time, we had the um, I suppose, the comfort to sit around and and make up these stories because ancient midwinter uh would have been a time mostly just for coping with freezing temperatures. You know, we would have had shorter days, limiting foraging time. Uh there was the snow, of course, making hunting way more difficult, plants were disappearing, water was freezing, it must have been extremely tough. And and although a tough, difficult climate, you know, one in which they can't come up with all these cultural figures, surprisingly it seems that they did still make time for festivities and festive traditions.

SPEAKER_02 18:42 Yeah, and and this only increased, I think, uh as people developed their comforts and sort of became more centralized communities. But festivals and ritual gathering may have even been more common in harsh environments like this, because they were a tool for survival. If you think about it, gatherings like this would help groups to reinforce social bonds and reduce conflict and share resources and exchange mates.

SPEAKER_01 19:12 Yeah, exactly. And when you're facing months of darkness and those freezing temperatures, you sort of need everyone on the same page. Uh so sharing food, cooperating, you know, not killing people over mammoth ribs would have been helpful. Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 19:28 And um, I guess we can sort of see just as a general point, these kind of rituals and traditions and culture um all being kind of tools to make sure that we survive and cooperate and increase morale.

SPEAKER_01 19:44 And we have some evidence for this, right? This isn't just us imagining what it would have been like.

SPEAKER_02 19:49 Yeah, we do. Um, although, of course, there are plenty of elements open to interpretation. So archaeology gives us these amazing snapshots. There are sites in Scandinavia like the Altar Rock Art Complex or the Comsa Culture sites, where we've found rock art from as far back as 11,000 years ago. So quite often this art depicts herds of reindeer, elk, bear, and clear hunting systems. So this suggests ancient hunter-gatherers were deeply connected to the animals and seasons around them and possibly time their big hunts for the harsh winter season. And because of all the animal imagery, this has led some people to believe that these hunts were more than just a search for food, but they also had symbolic, ritual or even cosmological dimensions.

SPEAKER_01 20:41 Okay, so kind of maybe close to being like a ritual or ceremony type thing, but still not quite Christmas. No, no, true.

SPEAKER_02 20:51 But while we can't prove there was a fixed winter festival every year, it's not far-fetched to imagine that these hunts became communal rituals. They were gathering, feasting, storytelling, and having ceremonies rooted in deep respect for the animals that kept people alive through the cold.

SPEAKER_01 21:10 Yeah, so you know, ceremonies or not, it's clear that our ancient ancestors, you know, they had it rough during these early times. They existed in very small bands of people with limited shelter, limited tools, and food was hard to come by. So anything that they were doing in terms of rituals and ceremonies, I think, you know, they they would have been purely tools for survival.

SPEAKER_02 21:32 Yeah, and you think about it that this is kind of like some superfluous thing that we have in the modern world because we're comfortable, but actually the opposite might well be true, that it was a necessity for survival. They wouldn't be giving up the resources, you know, maybe eating more than they usually would, maybe spending more energy than they needed to, uh unless there was a particularly good reason for it. And uh once the Earth's climate began to shift and become more stable, and we exited the last ice age around 11,000 years ago, uh agriculture and permanent settlements became a real possibility.

SPEAKER_01 22:14 Yeah, so at this point we sort of moved out of so this is sort of the shift, isn't it, that we're talking about. Um moving from those really harsh ancient midwinters to a time when you know we were able to stop just being primitive foragers and hunters. So in this time, you know, we suspect the wheel was invented after the end of the last ice age. So our settlements they started becoming a lot more advanced. They turned from basic semi temporary shelters made from word, bones, and animal hides, um, like the mammoth bone huts that you find in in Ukraine, into sort of huts and houses from the late Neolithic period that really start to resemble more modern homes.

SPEAKER_02 22:56 Yeah, so I really just um We have some pictures of the huts in front of us. And I really recommend for anyone listening to look up the mammoth bone huts that Ollie mentioned from Ukraine. They're really fascinating. They look like something out of a movie or a video game. And yeah, they just look they look metal. Yeah, they do.

SPEAKER_01 23:19 They've got like these great big the sort of the horns or the tusks are the entrance to the to the home. So they sort of create this circular entrance with the bones and the leather and the hide draped across it. It looks amazing, actually.

SPEAKER_02 23:34 It does make me somewhat glad to be living in a house made of bricks. Little pig, little pig, let me in.

SPEAKER_01 23:42 One little pig made his house out of mammoth bones. The wolf just was like, I'm not even touching that. That sounds like a story to tell your children. Yeah, okay. I'll add I'll add a fourth pig to the three little pigs for them.

SPEAKER_02 23:55 Yeah, the one with a house made of mammoth bones. And Krampus is knocking on the door.

SPEAKER_01 24:02 Little children let me in. Yeah, that's gonna that's gonna give them a nice good night's sleep.

SPEAKER_02 24:08 Yeah, well, I I might not really recommend it to the parents out there, but um I told you this isn't an episode for children. Yes, absolutely. We can see where the disclaimer comes from. But going from these mammoth huts to more permanent structures and larger communities and emergent cultures forming and a giant higher level of comfort, we believe we see more of an emergence in rituals and traditions. And this became more of the more recognizable beginnings of the winter celebrations that we have today.

SPEAKER_01 24:44 Yeah, so we had time to begin developing our rituals as as we sort of have alluded to before. You know, rituals, superstitions, religious beliefs even started to grow as these communities and cultures grew. And we can see evidence of this in the appearance of more elaborate megalithic structures and tombs.

SPEAKER_02 25:05 Yeah. If you look at a site like um Newgrange, for example, in Ireland, uh now this dates back to more than 5,000 years ago. The roof box over the entrance is aligned so that the winter solstice sunrise illuminates the inner chamber. And this only lasts for a few days around the 21st of December, which is the date of the winter solstice. So it's thought to intentionally be made that way to mark the solstice. And it was actually built 500 years before the pyramids, so it's one of the earliest confirmed solstice monuments.

SPEAKER_01 25:41 Yeah, so you can kind of, you know, you you can see how you might view what they were doing at Newgrange as like an ancient festival of light. So, you know, humans marking the moment when the world begins its slow return from darkness. And actually, um, the evidence of winter ceremonies at Stonehenge in the UK is also pretty strong. So, Stonehenge, for those who don't know, is a megalithic structure which was built around 2500 BC, and archaeologists are now pretty widely in agreement that Stonehenge was fundamentally a winter monument. You know, the the rocks literally line up with and point to the winter solstice sunset, which is almost certainly deliberate. But the strongest evidence doesn't just come from how the stones are aligned, but it also comes from a nearby settlement. So Durrington Walls is where the builders lived, the builders of Stonehenge, and it was there that they performed seasonal feasting. So what archaeologists have found is ancient pig teeth from that settlement. And the reason that's a good clue is because most of the pigs seem to have been slaughtered at around nine to ten months old. And in Britain, piglets are born in the spring. So, you know, just do the calculations, nine months on from that would have been midwinter.

SPEAKER_02 27:00 Right, okay, so this is all evidence that there were feasts at this location, and we can make the assumption that it was during midwinter, and there was also archaeologists have also found signs of lots of cooking and big communal meals, and even animals brought in from all over Britain. And this suggests that people were travelling specifically for a winter gathering. Some of the houses at Darrington Walls are aligned to the midwinter sunrise as well. Amazingly, Stonehenge opened up for the winter solstice again this year. It's just passed, which means humans, all these thousands of years later, are still gathering at the very same monument to celebrate this time of year.

SPEAKER_01 27:44 Yeah, I find this absolutely incredible that people um, you know, the BBC did an article and and um as this podcast goes out, it will have just happened, uh, the event, it's because it's the 21st of December, the winter solstice. And this picture on the BBC article is just fantastic. It's everybody, some of them topless, you know, this is in the middle of winter, uh, raising their arms to the sky, uh, seemingly painted in blue, uh, some of them. And, you know, there's just something really um like ancient about these pictures. Primal, yeah, really primal. Uh, and I think it's uh quite an amazing testament to what our ancient ancestors were doing. Like I think we often look back in time and think our ancient ancestors were stupid or you know, they didn't have the knowledge that we've got today, but they were doing things that we still find meaningful now.

SPEAKER_02 28:37 Yeah, totally. Um I mean there are cynical people who will look at this and say that these people, you know, are what are they doing? They're they're acting like they're, you know, people from thousands of years ago and hailing the sun and the start of the longer days and things. But actually, I think this gathering of people, particularly in our age now post-COVID, um, these things I I think there's a lot more meaning and a lot more power to these kind of things. They're much more necessary potentially than they have been for a while.

SPEAKER_01 29:15 Yeah, I I think our ancestors were marking the solstice and and other events in different ways, but in particular the solstice in various different forms for a good reason for thousands of years, for much longer than we've been living these sort of modernized lives, right? So we can't just uh as you know consign that to the past and say, oh, they were silly and we're not. Um, I think we probably still have lessons to learn from what they were doing, you know, because we we even have sites like Gosex Circle, which also lines up with the sun during winter and summer solstices. And this was a German Neolithic structure built around 4900 BC. So it's not like this was just one place in time. This was happening everywhere, and so people sort of need events like this and gatherings like this, and we are losing that a little bit in a in a virtually connected world.

SPEAKER_02 30:14 Yeah, it's totally easy to see why this tradition may have continued and evolved and also been so important to so many people. And this is kind of regardless of where they were in Europe, these practices seem to be ongoing independently in multiple places, thousands of miles away from each other, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:35 Yeah, exactly. There's so many things that we haven't mentioned from this sort of period, or slightly later, like the Karnak Stones in France, for instance, which also align with the solstices. So it's clear that this was important.

SPEAKER_02 30:48 And even in myths from Norse, Greek, Egyptian, even Japanese cultures, they all have these winter or solstice-shaped stories where the sun dies or hides or battles darkness and then returns. Darkness the band. I think it's the darkness, but I'd love to see Justin Hawkins fighting the sun. That would be that might be the coolest thing I've ever seen. Um so these were all different cultures and different eras, particularly uh if we go with the example that you just raised. Um, it's a myth I haven't heard of until now, I must admit. It's one I'm gonna spread. But all of these myths, in all seriousness, they all share a similar kind of emotional um fingerprint.

SPEAKER_01 31:41 Yeah, actually, the there's something I really want to explore, and maybe it's not for uh getting too deep into this episode, but um, you know, I I do wonder whether there's like an individual person who can be attributed if you go far enough back to each of the emergence of these myths, you know, like one dad telling his child a bedtime story, which kind of got got out of hand. Like, you know, how cumulatively do we come to shape these myths? I find that quite fascinating. Or is it really that there's one or two people who start the tradition and then carry it on and they have no clue and no idea that it was just going to become this thing, you know, the first person to ever say, you know, the the Krampus, should we just like say that he eats children and then you know now people are doing these massive ceremony like like festivals in in his name?

SPEAKER_02 32:30 Um what an impact to make if those people only knew that the story that they probably just told to their kid happens to now be what 2,000, 3,000, maybe more years later being part of celebrations turned into a film. Yeah, turned into the a film. Um and that's just one example. So yeah, it's it is fascinating to think about.

SPEAKER_01 32:55 Well, we we will get on to someone who an individual who made a big contribution to Christmas, and I suppose that person probably doesn't know the impact, the cultural impact they've had now that obviously they're dead now. But um, you know, when they wrote this particular poem, whether or not they would have known where it was going to end up is highly unlikely. But one thing I do want to touch on when we discuss these points about sort of our ancient ancestors is um that they they weren't just celebrating the beginning of the end of winter. So, you know, these pictures from the the Stonehenge celebrations that we're doing in the modern day, they look celebr celebratory, they look joyous, festive. But actually, you know, many of these practices was uh would have originated, uh they would have been driven by fear. You know, these people would have wanted the sun to come back, they wanted a fruitful spring, they wanted their people to survive in these really harsh conditions, and they wanted their crops and animals to provide them with sustenance again. And that all makes sense, but did we see much evidence of that fear? Yeah, so many of the sites where seasonal rituals took place um also were found to be areas where offerings took place. So uh you know, things like weapons, animals, humans even being sacrificed or offered to gods, sometimes offered to spirits or or actually just nature itself. And the idea is that this was a means of appeasing these forces to ensure survival during and after winter scarcity.

SPEAKER_02 34:29 And these rituals continued as time progressed, but it's when we get to the Iron Age from 800 to 50 BC that we start to see more substantial evidence of formal religious reasons for these things. And while obviously written records are a little limited from this time, classical sources suggest that the druids of the Iron Age Celtic religion also celebrated winter solstice. We really start to see the natural evolution of what we've spoken about already. Similar festivals and rituals largely focused around appeasing the gods so that the sun may continue to rise.

SPEAKER_01 35:12 And we also believe the early forms of two of the most well-known formal winter festivals had their roots around this time. So these are Saturnalia and Yule. And although you know the more formal definition of these uh celebrations probably came a little later than the Iron Age, it seems that um the idea for them was sort of seeded around this time.

SPEAKER_02 35:36 So although we think Yule may have had earlier roots and maybe more explicitly tied to Christmas, let's start with Saturnalia. So Saturnalia was an ancient Roman winter festival, and it was celebrated between December the 17th and December the 23rd. Which, of course, without sounding like a broken record, overlaps the winter solstice. Yeah, exactly. So we can't get away from it that easily. But rather than just some theories or evidence of general rituals, we finally have a named, defined festival. And it's named after Saturn. Yes, yeah, Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture. This likely evolved from older agrarian rites, celebrating the end of the autumn planting season and midwinter, ensuring fertility of crops and livestock. So early forms may have included ritual sacrifices and feasts dating back to the pre-Roman practices from before 500 BC.

SPEAKER_01 36:41 Yeah, I just I don't know why we don't do ritual sacrifices anymore. Um, but this kept evolving, right? Practices they they started adding more practices to the celebrations. So we had things like uh you know the normal feasting and even role reversals where slaves could act as masters for the day, and uh we even see some of the early forms of gift giving.

SPEAKER_02 37:06 Yeah, yeah, exactly. In ancient Rome, we see our first evidence of pre-Christmas gift giving, uh, which is of course a staple of our modern celebration.

SPEAKER_01 37:17 Yeah, uh during Saturnalia, Romans um they would swap like small, deliberately playful gifts, so nothing like the big sort of tacky things that we receive today. Um so these might have been like joke figurines, um, maybe novelty candles, dice, mildly rude trinkets, things like that. And the idea was kind of to amuse rather than impress. And so actually, at the heart of it was humour. Um, so the gifts would have been more way more modest than we're used to. But the idea was to sort of, you know, spread light in midwinter and reinforce the festival's spirit of mischief um and also equality, because a big part of Saturnalia was this idea of sort of temporarily upending or suspending social rules.

SPEAKER_02 38:07 Yeah, this is a pretty amazing. It actually shows how even parts of Saturnalia have been absorbed by our current day Christmas traditions.

SPEAKER_01 38:16 Yeah, I mean, it was a very popular festival. Although it probably wasn't as important as Christmas is to us now, you know, a lot of people loved it.

SPEAKER_02 38:25 And I've on that note kind of dug through a few sources to find out what life was like for the ancient Romans during this period, so December 17th to the 23rd. For instance, there's uh a Roman writer called uh Publius Papinius Statius, uh, I think that's how you pronounce it. Very good. He described some aspects of Satinalia in one of his poems as part of his work Silver. Now Statius described a Satinalia banquet hosted by the Emperor Domitian. The poem describes a grand feast, uh lots of guests, entertainment, and gifts given by the Emperor. Oh yeah, you um you've read this poem, haven't you? Uh yeah, I have. Not in Latin, I have to admit. Um, I did use um an English translation rather than reading it in the original Latin. So for those listening who are interested in reading it too, the poem is called uh Calende des Decembre. I apologize for anyone who does speak Latin if I've butchered that. Um But this poem seems to talk as if the gods will step aside and even celebrate this festival together with just normal people, and they would all together be enjoying wine, jokes, and some luxurious foods together. They named actually the types of foods, things that were not normal to have on a regular basis there. And all of this was said to symbolically surpass even nature's largest storm in grandiosity.

SPEAKER_01 40:06 Okay, so you sort of see that there's this equality that they're trying to achieve. Like even the gods are coming down to the human level to enjoy the feasting. That being said, though, you know, he was recounting quite a lavish affair. So we've got this idea of equality through it, but I don't imagine it would have been the experience for like the average Joe in R in ancient Roman times to have these incredibly luxurious, la lavish feasts and festivals, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:39 No, no. I imagine that it was uh what they were describing was kind of the feast with the emperor, so it would have been kind of for the the real upper classes of the time.

SPEAKER_01 40:51 Yeah, exactly. But I mean, as we mentioned before, there is this idea of like social roles being temporarily reversed. So even if they weren't doing something so lavish, they may have been still celebrating Saturnalia. Um, and actually, in within this sort of tradition, there would have been um a ruler of Saturnalia. So this would be someone appointed during the celebrations, maybe somebody who was low status in a household, or um, you know, perhaps otherwise um not usually in charge, they would have been given the power to issue humorous commands to others during the festival.

SPEAKER_02 41:27 Yeah. And in some ways, you can still see the similarities with modern Christmas, just the concept of children being allowed to get away with a bit more than usual or to be a bit more cheeky with the adults around Christmas. Yeah. So actually, around this time there was also a phrase that went along with Saturnalia, which was Eo Saturnalia. Now, this was a customary greeting during the festival from Eo, an ancient Latin exclamation of joy or surprise or even triumph. And of course, Saturnalia, the name of the festival. So even this, even in meaning, it's basically their version of Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER_01 42:10 Yeah, so it does sound like Saturnalia really did feel like a proto-Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 42:16 Yeah, and we can totally see where we've maybe borrowed some things over time or how they've mu merged together, but Yule is definitely linked more closely to Christmas. As you may know, many of the traditions of Yule merged with Christmas during the Christianization of the Germanic peoples.

SPEAKER_01 42:36 Yeah, so just r remind us um who the Germanic people were.

SPEAKER_02 42:40 Yeah, so these were tribal groups who lived in northern Europe and were identified by their shared Indo-European Germanic languages. They originated in um southern Scandinavia, you know, Denmark, uh, and northern Germany, and they had a significant impact on European history. But by the early Middle Ages, they'd kind of been gradually getting converted to Christianity, and their traditions had largely died out. They were mostly absorbed by Christmas traditions.

SPEAKER_01 43:18 Okay, so the Germanic people, their celebrations preceded Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 43:23 Yeah, exactly. And this is where Christmas's pagan roots sort of begin officially. So ancient Yul Time was basically a pagan festival for marking the symbolic death and rebirth of the sun. Many believe it was a time for celebrating the winter solstice. Take a shot every time you yeah, uh this is an episode more aimed at adults, so we should have specified that at the start. But um but some sources say that Yule was actually celebrated after the solstice, so around the 14th of January, perhaps even as late as February.

SPEAKER_01 44:05 Begging the question then, was it marking the winter solstice at all or something else?

SPEAKER_02 44:11 Well, it can also feel in the north of Europe like at the time of January and February, the sun doesn't rise at all. So maybe this is my theory. And the north of England, I'll tell you, it feels like the sun doesn't rise for at least six months of the year. Um but it could actually have had more to do with the phases of the moon rather than the sun. Um, and this is to say Christmas certainly isn't just a rebrand of Yule, even though people sort of use the terms interchangeably at the moment, um, or these days I should say. I mean it Christmas takes place on the 25th of December, which obviously just doesn't line up. So Christmas is more of a blending of traditions.

SPEAKER_01 44:55 Yeah, but even still, Yule has been co-opted. By Christian Christmas. And Yule is the origin of things that we sort of know and love today, like the Yule log, right?

SPEAKER_02 45:08 Kind of, yeah. It's not quite as simple as that. So in modern times, we think of a Yule log as a cake that looks a bit tree-like. Um I actually can't differentiate it from a col Colin the Caterpillar, to be honest. It doesn't have a face. That's the difference. Basically, yeah. Um, but it's they didn't have Colin the Caterpillar in Yule times. Um, it would have originally been a large tree trunk that was burnt on a hearth. But this tradition seemingly originates in around the year 1184 as a Christmas Eve tradition. So the theory isn't that pagans had Yule logs and then we turned them into cakes. It's actually that the burning of the wood seems to have come from an older pagan tradition called something else. We're not actually sure what.

SPEAKER_01 46:03 Okay, so so basically, as part of these old pagan traditions, you know, burning wood was customary and then it just evolved over time and eventually ended up as a Yule log and a cake. Um, but there are actually there are many more things to discuss about Yule than just Yule logs. Um so Yule has had a few different names. Uh it's Yol, or I guess they're all pronounced similarly to Yule but spelt differently. So in Old English it would have been spelt G-E-O-L. You had Yulius in Gothic, and you had Yol in Old Norse, which is J, O with an acute accent, and then an L. And actually, neo-Pagans, so you know, modern day pagans like Wicca, they've even tried to revive the Old Norse term Yol with the acute accent over the O. Um, so it it's funny, you kind of got these people who again really want to relive the ancient traditions of our ancestors, maybe finding that there's something missing from the modern day ones. But I want to sort of delve into a little bit l of what Yule Time would have been like for uh the people celebrating it in its heyday. So imagine this.

SPEAKER_02 47:18 You're huddled around great fires, surrounded by light, dancing, and merriment. Groups of people gather to feast on slaughtered cattle. Sacrifices are made to the gods, to the dead, and to the elves. The elves. Yeah, well, any supernatural being really. The intention was just generally to appease them, so they wouldn't cause mischief or upset the usual process of the seasons. And perhaps to ward off bad luck and sickness. You've got to remember that this was a time when the supernatural was just a daily part of life.

SPEAKER_01 47:56 Uh there were other Yule tie traditions that have persisted too. So um you've got the Yule Goat, you might know this as an ornament that like hangs on your Christmas tree. Usually they're made of straw and they're tied up with red ribbons. But the Yule Goat would have originally been um not just a decoration, it's theorised it may have been a way to appease the Norse god Thor, who rode the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats. And in Sweden, the Yule Goat was even said to be this invisible spirit that would make sure people prepared properly for Yule.

SPEAKER_02 48:32 I haven't really heard about the Yule Goat before, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 48:38 Yeah, the Yule to be I'll honestly, I hadn't really either until I started doing the research for this. Um, but it did make me realise that something adjacent to the Yule Goat that I see quite often. In fact, my neighbours have giant versions in their front garden. They're these straw ornaments wrapped in red ribbon, just like the Yule Goat, but they're usually now I would say depicted as reindeer and not goats.

SPEAKER_02 49:05 So it's interesting that we maybe see that the goats in this kind of winter festival context have become reindeer in our sort of modern day context. And maybe we even see that with um, as you mentioned before, the Norse god Thor was riding the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats. Yeah. Now we have Santa riding the sky in a sleigh drawn by um reindeer. So um maybe this is also an evolution.

SPEAKER_01 49:37 Yeah, so the Yule goat is just um a victim of Thor being pushed aside for Santa and goats sort of, you know, they got the chop at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 49:48 Yeah, it's not fair that we um all have heard of Thor, but nobody knows about these goats. Yeah. We need to rewrite the history books. But generally, if we look at pre-Christian traditions that we still do in in some way uh today, you've also got things like wassailing. Um this is basically house-to-house singing. The word itself comes from the old English was hail, be healthy. And it began as a blessing shared over a communal bowl of hot spiced ale.

SPEAKER_01 50:25 Yeah, but there were actually two different, like very different forms of wassailing. So one was this door-to-door thing, you know, where groups visited homes, they'd sing for food or drink, which is, I guess, the rough ancestor of today's Christmas caroling. But the other was far older and a lot stranger. This was orchard wassailing. So communities would head into their apple orchards on Twelfth Night or the Epiphany, they would choose the oldest tree, sing to it, pour cider over its roots, hang toast in its branches, and then fire guns to scare away evil spirits. Um, and it was sort of a fertility ritual, which what they wanted to do was like wake the trees during the darkest point of winter and coax a good harvest.

SPEAKER_02 51:16 I really think we should still do this now. It's much better than the carol singing that we were forced to do at school. I'd much prefer to go to an orchard and basically get drunk and fire guns in the sky and sing to trees. That sounds awesome. Poor pour their own guts back on them.

SPEAKER_01 51:35 Yeah, basically. I wonder if it worked. Oh yeah. I mean, we're here today thanks to our ancestors, so clearly something something worked.

SPEAKER_02 51:44 Well, I'm assuming it wasn't thanks to them drinking cider and shooting guns. Um But anyway, over time Christianity sort of eventually softened those rough edges that we see like with Wasailing. But the underlying idea remained the same. In midwinter, you gather together, you make some noise, you drink something warm and symbolically help the world come back to life.

SPEAKER_01 52:11 Yeah, and actually, um the sort of rough side of wassailing um I think is reflected in the lyrics, we wish you a Merry Christmas. So you've got like rowdier parts of that song where it goes like, now bring us some figure pudding, we won't go until we get some. So like I you you know, you wouldn't go around someone's house and do that now. Yeah, we still sing that song, and we never really think of the origin of where those particular lines come from. And I I think they must have something to do with Wasili.

SPEAKER_02 52:43 Yeah, so what we're saying, um, just to go back because we only sort of touched on it, is that Wasaling, other than the orchard variant, was a rough ancestor of Christmas caroling, but it was mostly um kind of rowdy drunk people doing it, wasn't it? It wasn't like this image that we have of uh Christmas caroling now where it's like a sweet family or a choir or something. They were actually kind of it was more a bit like the kind of trick or treat, uh, but but with drunk adults yelling for piggy pudding. Yeah, um, but there's also this side note, and sort of touching on Halloween a little bit, um apparently some people think that ancient Yule was kind of intended to be a day of the dead style event, with Odin, the principal god in Norse mythology, known as the all father, acting in his capacity as god of the dead.

SPEAKER_01 53:41 But this is disputed. Even the uh good old-fashioned Christmas tree came from the Yule tree, and general traditions of bringing evergreens into the home during winter months, actually. So uh the idea is that these evergreens symbolised life and fertility.

SPEAKER_02 53:58 Oh, what sort of things?

SPEAKER_01 53:59 Well, everything you'd expect really, everything that you hear in the carols and the songs that we sing, you had holly, then that that was, I think, to ward off evil. There was ivy for resilience and rebirth. Uh, mistletoe would have been for peace and fertility, which I suppose makes sense because you kiss under the mistletoe. And then uh U would have come into the house for the ancestors, like for death and eternal life. And there were all sorts of other evergreens that they would bring into the home for various different reasons.

SPEAKER_02 54:30 And our modern version of a Christmas tree became part of German tradition by the 1600s, 1700s. But they didn't become mainstream in Britain until they were popularized actually by the monarchy.

SPEAKER_01 54:43 Yeah, that's right. So in December 1848, the Illustrated London News published this hugely influential engraving of Victoria, Albert, and their children gathered around a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle.

SPEAKER_02 54:59 And that image went everywhere. Middle class families across Britain wanted to imitate the royal domestic ideal. Not because of Royal Command, just because the scene looked kind of wholesome and fashionable and quite modern for the time. Over the next decade, Christmas trees just became a staple of Victorian domestic life, a feature in department stores and public buildings, and just a symbol of family-centered Christmas celebration.

SPEAKER_01 55:32 And we'll get into um how the Victorians sort of cleaned up Christmas in a moment. But as you alluded to with Wasseiling, Christmas was actually very rowdy for a time.

SPEAKER_02 55:44 Yeah, actually, a common tradition was the feast of fools, where a lord of misrule would be crowned. That was the term they used, Lord of Misrule. So this happened inside church communities, and the person crowned Lord would preside over the revelries and encourage wild behaviour and the temporary reversal of social hierarchies, kind of like we heard about earlier in Saturnalia. The whole thing was about kind of deliberately mocking church hierarchy and ritual.

SPEAKER_01 56:18 Yeah, and at medieval carnivals during the Middle Ages, Christmas celebrations uh were often compared to like modern-day Mardi Gras, so they involved heavy drinking, public feasting, and general generally this sort of carnival atmosphere. And then you got all the off-a-sailing, the general public disorder. The celebrations were so boisterous that in some cases special guards were hired just for the Christmas season in case of um alcohol-fueled riots.

SPEAKER_02 56:46 Yeah, that's right. In fact, the first paid professional police force in New York City was instituted in 1828 in response to a Christmas riot. But then the shift towards a sort of say tamer holiday came.

SPEAKER_01 57:05 Yeah, so in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Puritans and other Protestant reformers actually banned Christmas celebrations in places like England and Boston, Massachusetts, because they viewed the holiday as an unbiblical excuse for riot and dissipation. Um and later Victorian authors like Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, they promoted this vision of a more peaceful Christmas, this warm, benevolent holiday that brought people together across social classes. Um and that kind of helped reform the rowdier customs into what we see as the more private domestic celebration uh today.

SPEAKER_02 57:48 Yeah, you can see a few angles here. Obviously, the Victorian monarchy, and then here we have a Christmas carol, which obviously that's gonna make it a lot more wholesome.

SPEAKER_00 57:58 Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 57:59 I mean, the Muppets Christmas Carol, obviously, being the best version.

SPEAKER_02 58:03 Yes, I I will agree with you on that one.

SPEAKER_01 58:05 I think uh you break into songs, but yeah, I do a good curate with the frog. What was that? That was awful. Uh I'd do a much better version when I'm not chuckling.

SPEAKER_02 58:18 Um good. Um but other than these kind of more softenings of Christmas, the Victorians also commercialized Christmas. No, yes, unfortunately. But it's important to remember that their version actually looked kind of nothing like the frantic shopping heavy Christmas that a lot of us know today. But with the advent of mass-produced toys and the emotional storytelling of Dickens, suddenly Christmas was a season you could market, and not just uh, you know, alcohol companies. Um so Victorian gifts were still modest and deeply considered. There was you know, maybe you would get a handmade toy or a knitted scarf or a book or a box of sweets. Children usually received just one meaningful present, not mountains of wrapping paper and plastic. And etiquette guides actually even warned against giving anything too flashy for Christmas. But this huge modern high-pressure gifting culture that we have today only really took off in the 20th century, when post-war prosperity, advertising, and modern consumerism scaled Christmas into the giant industry it is now.

SPEAKER_01 59:47 Yeah, like the Victorian version of gift giving doesn't sound horrendous to me. And I kind of love it actually, like the simplicity, the intentionality, and like, you know, with the modern way that we see gift giving, I don't know, it feels a bit hollow now. I think we've lost a little something along the way with all of our, you know, sending wish lists out and set amounts of money that we have to spend on each other. I, you know, I made this six-part podcast about my grandma's experience being sent to a German internment camp during the Second World War, which you can actually listen to um on the YouTube channel for what we did before, and it's called the Guernsey Deportees. And in the podcast, I actually asked her if they celebrated Christmas while they were behind barbed wire, while they were prisoners of war. And she said that they still did. They actually developed this really close-knit community in Biberak, uh, which is the internment camp she was in, and it's quite an amazing story to listen to. But this particular moment really cut through to me. So even though she was only four years old, she vividly remembers the cardboard doll's house that her dad made for her. Um, she said it had no lights, it was made from you know what essentially whatever he could find, but she loved it so much that she remembers it to this day. And I do wonder if kids these days will be able to recall presents that they receive from the mountains that they get.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:15 Yeah, I mean, an amazing story, firstly, I think it kind of buys into this idea that I've always had, and I think a lot of us have, which is that it's not about the money that you spend, particularly with children. You think that you have to buy all of these toys and things. Often it's the one kind of thing they really want that they care about and remember, and the rest is kind of just forgotten to time. And even at four years old, the significance of the cardboard dolls house that her dad, that your grand's dad made for her, wasn't lost on her. She didn't go like, oh, but I wanted this, you know, I had a whole list and this was something that really touched her and she loved it and still loves it, and it's been a core memory for her life. That's amazing. So I think we can really learn something from stories like that. But sort of going back to the Victorian era and the Victorian experience of Christmas, so they during this time kind of also used Christmas to soften the grimness of the industrial age. Oh, right. Yeah, so cities were crowded and work was brutal and dangerous, and child labour was everywhere. So there isn't really a comparison between your grandma's experience and you know the Victorian experience, but there is maybe something that links the two, which is the fact that they even spent the time to celebrate Christmas in Bibberack, and that it's this standout memory of a bit of positivity in what must have been an awful time. In Victorian uh Britain, there was child labour and you know the this these difficult working and living arrangements. So this newly reinvented kind of nice Christmas that was being marketed a bit more and more of a wholesome kind of tradition, this became a kind of moral pause in the calendar, and factory owners would start offering rare days off or small seasonal treats, and the churches would promote Christmas charity as kind of a social duty. It didn't solve the industrial misery, but it briefly made the world feel a bit kinder than it actually was.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45 And if we could just pop back to old Father Christmas once more, since the Victorians are really the ones who turned Father Christmas from this minor folkloric figure into a central part of the Christmas celebration. So before the 1800s, Father Christmas wasn't a gift giver, and he wasn't especially important either. He was more like uh the personification of midwinter feasting, this sort of jolly adult spirit of eating, drinking, and good cheer. But when the Victorians reinvented Christmas as this warm, family-centered holiday, they needed a a figure who embodied that new spirit. And, you know, Father Christmas sort of came ready-made for the job.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27 Yeah, at the same time, though, the British Father Christmas sort of began to merge with the Dutch Sinterklaas traditions, and this was kind of arriving from America. So the Victorians effectively fused the two, the British Spirit of Christmas and the American-style bringer of gifts. By the late 19th century, you get a recognizable Santa slash Father Christmas hybrid. Jolly, bearded, friendly, associated with children, and appearing in cards, shop windows, and department store promotions.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03 Yeah, and this was the period when Father Christmas became a household presence, you know, like a marketing icon, really, and a key part of the Christmas story. So without the Victorian makeover, he'd have probably remained a minor folk character rather than the face of the holiday. And what about his red coat? Everyone sort of credits Coca-Cola with that, right? Ah, yes. So um Coca-Cola didn't invent Santa's modern look necessarily, but they they did standardise it. So Santa before then came in all sorts of colours, like before the 1930s. So in Britain, Father Christmas often wore green or brown, which, you know, because he was like a midwinter woodland spirit rather than this gift giver. And then uh early American Santas were often drawn wearing blue, tan, grey, or even brown fur coats. And then European St. Nicholas figures, um, you know, based on St. St. Nicholas of Mira, they wore red and gold bishops' robes that looked absolutely nothing like today's suits. So there wasn't a single style at all. Santa, he was basically like a sh a shapeshifter depending on who was drawing him. But then Coca-Cola launched their advertising campaign with the Chicago-based commercial illustrator Haddon Sunblom. And his picture of this jolly, plump, red-suited Santa just went everywhere. Um, it didn't, you know, create the colour necessarily because there were red Santas that existed, but it froze that colour in place. So the bright Coca-Cola red became the Santa that the whole world agreed on.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44 But he was kind of depicted like this further back in time, descriptively at least, in Clement Clark Moore's 1823 poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:54 Yes, this is the poem I read to my children all throughout Christmas. It begins 'twas the night before Christmas. Actually for Ages, I thought that was the name of the book. Twas in fact, I think the book is called Twars the Night Before Christmas, but yeah, originally called A Visit from St. Nicholas. And it was the first known text to feature Santa's reindeer and connect them to the sleigh. And obviously, he describes Santa in the poem as a jolly old elf with twinkling eyes, merry dimples, rosy cheeks. And this was quite strange, really, because up until then Santa Claus was a figure traditionally depicted as like a thinner, less jolly, horse riding disciplinarian. I imagine he was depicted a bit more like St. Nicholas of Mira, for instance.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:41 And this poem even gave us the reindeer's names for the first time. And also this idea of Santa landing on people's roofs and sliding down their chimneys.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53 Yeah, I think it's amazing, actually. I I've got the poem, like I said, that I read to my girls. And on the last page of the book, um, it says that it was anonymously posted in the New York Sentinel newspaper, and eventually it was claimed by Clement Clark Moore, but actually another New Yorker has laid claim to it as well, Henry Livingston Jr. But what I find truly amazing is that this piece of anonymously posted prose potentially written by two different people, has echoed throughout the ages. You know, it's had this massive impact on how we view Christmas, how we view one of the most important figures of Christmas. And whoever wrote it in the first place didn't even want to put their name to it. You know, um, I wonder if any modern tales could ever have such a lasting impact on the Christmas tradition ever again.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:51 Yeah, it's hard to imagine that anything would, right? It feels like everything's so steeply kind of ingrained in our culture. But um I don't know about you, but I feel like I've actually already noticed a difference in Christmas from when I was a kid to now. Um I can't say that there's any particular piece to that, but maybe it's Americanization or generally like capital capitalism kind of. But I I feel like Christmas has become more commercial. Um, we see some small changes in kind of how we do things, like Elf on a Shelf, for example. That wasn't a thing when we were kids. And one thing that was added a little bit later, um, we mentioned that the reindeer's names were named as part of the poem. Rudolph was actually added in 1939, when Montgomery Ward created him for a Christmas marketing booklet.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:50 Yeah, so things are changing already. And uh, I mean, this isn't in our living history, but it's in fairly recent history. And I guess the people who celebrated Saturnalia probably didn't see this like one pivotal shift that changed Saturnalia into Yule or Christmas or any of these other traditions. So maybe modern tales and modern traditions are changing Christmas, but changes like that happen just so slowly we don't we kind of miss them.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:17 It would be fascinating to bring an ancient Roman from a, you know, move them from a Sassinalia celebration to present day and show them how we're celebrating Christmas. I think they would be horrified. Um, or they might think it's amazing. I don't know. No one of Christmas. Yeah, where's the sacrifices? Why are your slaves not in charge here? Where are your slaves actually? What's going on?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:48 Yeah, so as as we wrap up, uh and we come to the end of this absolutely mammoth deep dive into the history of Christmas, which I didn't realise would be quite so fruitful. Um I I do think it's interesting to note that Christmas almost became a minor saint day that fizzled out. Early Christians uh they didn't celebrate Jesus' birthday at all. Birthdays were seen as pagan. And when Rome finally introduced a Nativity Festival on December 25th in the fourth century, that that actually arrived almost with no momentum. A lot of churches disliked the date that had been chosen. Some thought it wasn't a good idea to speculate about the date of Jesus' birth, others preferred January the 6th, and most still saw Easter as the only truly important celebration.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:37 And in some regions Christmas barely caught on. It wasn't actually until quite a bit later with Charlemagne choosing Christmas Day for his imperial coronation, and also with medieval Europe embracing the nativity through feasting, carols and winter theatre, that Christmas finally grew into a major festival. Without that sort of cultural boost, it could have easily just remained a small optional Saints Day lost in the liturgical calendar.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:13 Yeah, so perhaps one day, as we've sort of discussed, we'll we will have something else, something that will replace Christmas. And I really would love to know what that will be. Maybe a celebration of our AI overlords, perhaps.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:28 I hope not. And um obviously it's probably quite important to note that we are we're looking at the celebration purely from the tradition's perspective. We're not sort of commenting on uh what we're actually, you know, in the core of it, celebrating with any of these. So it's we're not saying that something will replace Christmas as, you know, the celebration of Christ if that's what you celebrate it for. But looking back in history, we have had winter festivals generally. I wonder what that might look like in the future. So just a final thought. I think it's quite common for people to think marking dates in the calendar or celebrating things like Christmas and New Year, or even Valentine's Day, is just sort of a cash grab. And that it's all a bit silly. But actually this is something that we've done as a species for time immemorial.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:28 Exactly. It's a bit of a modern luxury, I think, that we can choose to opt out of winter celebrations or call them silly or pointless, because for our ancient ancestors, this wasn't just a bit of fun, it was about survival, and plus marking dates in our calendar, you know, writing New Year's resolutions, having a reset to the year, it gives life a useful rhythm. It stops us from feeling that we're eternally stuck in the situations in which we find ourselves, and it may seem arbitrary, but I think these things are important, maybe more important than we often give them credit.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:06 Yeah, and while this may be a hard time of year for some and totally understandable why they might want to opt out of it, hopefully this podcast will be kind of taken for the intention that we've given and will help you to find new meaning in the holidays.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24 Well, Matt, I think that's a wrap of this Mammoth episode. You've been listening to What We Did Before. I'm Ollie. And I'm Matt.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:32 Have you got any ideas for an episode? Please let us know in the comments. And if we use your idea, we'll be sure to credit you in the outro.

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