The Krampus Kalendar: Z is for Zzzz...

And relax... Christmas is over for another year and it's Boxing Day! But why is the day after Christmas Day called Boxing Day?

It has nothing to do with the sport of boxing, if that’s what you’re wondering. Boxing Day has been known by that name since the Middle Ages because of its connection to alms boxes.

It was on this day that alms boxes – the boxes placed in churches to collect money for the needy – would be opened by the priests and the money, given by the better-off parishioners, distributed to the poor of the parish. This was once known as the ‘dole of the Christmas box’. It led, in time, to the practice of giving those who had provided a service over the previous year – such as delivering your milk or mail – a seasonal thank-you in the form of a ‘Christmas box’, hence, Boxing Day.

This type of collecting box was first brought to Britain by the Romans, but rather than distribute the money to the poor, the Romans used it to pay for the games which took place during the winter celebrations.

After the sixteenth century it was common practice for apprentices and household servants to ask their masters (and even their masters’ customers) for money at Christmas time. Any gifts of money they received were placed inside an earthenware ‘box’ – which looked more like a piggy bank, complete with a slit in the top – which was then broken open on 26 December.

Didn't get 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas for Christmas? Don't worry, you can buy it for yourself here!

And if you missed 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas on Kickstarter, you can place a late pledge here!

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: Y is for YULE

Today is Christmas Day! Happy Christmas!

Of course, Christmas is pre-dated by two major pagan festivals, the Roman Saturnalia and the Viking Yule. To our pagan ancestors living in the frozen north of Europe and Scandinavia, the dark days of winter were a frightening time. The darkness was the domain of demons and malicious spirits. On top of that, Odin, chief among the Norse gods, flew through the sky on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir, looking down at the world with his furious one-eyed gaze, deciding who should prosper and who should perish in the year ahead.

Yule was the name given to the Viking festive feast, a time when light and new birth were celebrated in the face of darkness and death as witnessed in the natural world. It was at this time that evergreens were brought into the house; a sign that life persisted, even during these darkest days of the year.

The Anglo-Saxons even referred to the month of December as both Winter Monath and Yule Monath.

To help keep the darkness at bay, on or around the 21 December, the time of the winter solstice, fathers and sons would go out into the forests and bring back the largest log they could find. This massive piece of timber was then put on the fire and left to burn for the entirety of the season of Yule – twelve days altogether.

The English word Yule is a corruption of the Old Norse Jōl. However, Jōl itself may derive from hjól, meaning ‘wheel’. In this sense, it refers to the moment when the wheel of the year is at its lowest point, in midwinter, ready to rise again in the spring.

So here's hoping you have a very happy Yule and a prosperous new year!

The Krampus Kalendar: X is for XMAS EVE

Every Christmas Eve, children the world over await the arrival of one individual more than any other (or at least one of his many lieutenants) with excited anticipation. The image of the jolly old man with his long white beard, red suit and attendant reindeer couldn’t be more familiar, but where did this admittedly peculiar figure come from? Who is, or was, the real Father Christmas?

Whether you call him Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Sinterklaus or Kris Kringle, the semi-historical, semi-legendary figure who inspired the Christmas gift-giver children know and love today was one Saint Nicholas. And he didn’t come from the North Pole or Lapland. Saint Nicholas came from Turkey (although, of course, turkeys come from Mexico)!

Nicholas was the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Myra in fourth century Byzantine Anatolia. His parents both died when he was still a young man, leaving him a considerable fortune. Shunning his wealth and privileged background to join the Church, Nicholas then made it his mission to give his riches away to those more deserving, and in greater need, than he. The most well-known example of his charity is the one which led to children hanging up their stockings on Christmas Eve for Santa to fill with gifts.

But the image we now have of Father Christmas has its origins in more than just the legendary life of one particular saint. In truth, Father Christmas’s origins go back much further than fourth century Turkey. For the Norsemen of Scandinavia, the season of Yule was as much a dark time ruled over by demons and malevolent spirits. It was best to stay indoors, to escape the baleful gaze of the nocturnal flyer Odin. Odin also brought winter to the world. In this guise he was accompanied by his Dark Helper, a demonic horned creature who punished wrong-doers. This figure would resurface later as Father Christmas’s assistant.

Thor, the Norse god of thunder, may well have had a hand in influencing the development of the Father Christmas myth, for he rode across the sky in an iron chariot pulled by two huge goats, called Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr (in English, Gnasher and Cracker), rather like Santa’s sleigh, with its team of reindeer.

There is also evidence that pagan peoples once worshipped an elemental spirit called Old Man Winter. He too went into the mix that was to eventually produce the figure of Father Christmas.

Father Christmas has an important part to play in 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, the latest title in the ACE Gamebooks series, and is available to buy now. If you've already bought it and read it, please do post a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever.

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: U is for UNPREPARED

Not matter how hard you try to be prepared, more often than not you’ll find yourself braving the chaos of the Christmas Eve last minute shopping spree, either in order to pick up that essential festive gift for the dog or another jar of gravy powder.

But before you dash off to the local garage to buy that special someone another chocolate orange, bear in mind that if you've already left your Christmas shopping a little late, you risk paying up to 50% more than those people who are – how shall we put it? – a little better organised.

A survey of Christmas shoppers conducted in 2013 revealed that 16-24 year-olds are actually the most organised when it comes to getting the Christmas shopping done, with nearly 44% of them buying their festive gifts in, or even before, November! Those aged 45 or older are the ones who are more likely to leave it to the last minute with almost a third not even starting on the seasonal shop until the week before Christmas.

When you look at the gender of last minute shoppers, rather than their age, one quarter of men do most of their Christmas shopping at the last possible moment, while half of all women have it done before the first week of December.

15% of shoppers cashed in their store loyalty coupons and vouchers to cover the cost of their purchases, while one in ten of those surveyed planned so far ahead that they actually bought their first Christmas present for December 2013 in the January sales! The people surveyed made an average five trips to the shops to get their Christmas shopping done, while one in ten didn’t shop in-store over the Christmas period at all, preferring to do so from the comfort of their laptop, tablet or smartphone!

It might not be too late to order a copy of 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, if you need a last minute stocking filler for something, but time is definitely running out for 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas, which finishes its run on Kickstarter at 11:59pm tonight!

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: T is for Christmas TREE

It would be hard to imagine Christmas without the familiar conical form of the festive tree. From December onwards (if not before) they can be found everywhere, from homes and schools to department stores and pretty much anywhere people will spend any amount of time during the Christmas period, whether it be a hospital or an office block. But where does the tradition of putting up a tree indoors come from, and has it always been such an important part of the Christmas celebrations as we know them?

Well, in some ways it is one of the more recently-established Christmas traditions, with the decorated tree as we know it rising to popularity during Queen Victoria’s reign. And then, in other ways, the tradition is older than Christmas itself.

At its root, it is really just another example of an evergreen brought into the home during the cold dark days of winter by our pagan forebears, along with the Yule log, boughs of holly and mistletoe. But it was actually the Romans who got there first, as they did with so much that has become modern-day Christmas tradition. During the festival of Saturnalia, held in honour of Saturn, the god of agriculture, Ancient Romans decorated trees with small pieces of metal.

The first Christmas trees were decorated with apples, as a symbol of Man’s fall in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of tree of knowledge. As a result, they were called Paradise trees. In time other decorations were added, in the form of nuts and even red ribbons, or strips of paper. Ultimately the apples were replaced by Christmas baubles.

In the Middle Ages, the Paradise tree went up on the feast day dedicated to Adam and Eve, 24 December, and to this day, purists believe that you should wait until Christmas Eve to erect your own tree, and then take it down again on Twelfth Night.

Possibly the earliest depiction of a Christmas tree dates from 1521 and comes from Germany. The painting shows a procession of musicians accompanying a horse-riding holy man – who may be a bishop or even Saint Nicholas – parading through a town. One of the men in the procession is holding high a tree decorated with what look like apples.

A candle-lit fir was also erected in a London street in the fifteenth century, but such trees remained as outside decorations and there are no records from the time stating that they were ever taken into the home. Evergreens in other forms were used to decorate houses though, so it is quite possible that some homes also included a tree, rather than simply being adorned with bits of one.

However, according to some historians the first recorded mention of an actual Christmas tree appears in a diary from Strasbourg, dated 1605. This particular tree was decorated with paper roses, apples, sweets and gold foil – the first tinsel.

There's a rather different kind of Christmas tree in 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, and also appear in 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas, which is into its final few days of funding on Kickstarter.

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: S is for SNOWMEN

The creation of anthropomorphic sculptures formed from atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals – more commonly known as a snowmen – is a popular pastime during the winter months... if it snows. Your typical snowman is made from two or three large snowballs, with sticks, pieces of coal, vegetables, and items of clothing being added to help create the illusion that they are in fact people.

There are documented records of snowmen being built since Medieval times – the earliest being an illustration in the margin of one of the pages of the 1380 Book of Hours, that resides in Koninklijke Bibliotheek, in The Hague – but it is likely that the practice dates back to the Neolithic period. After all, the representation of the human form, in no matter what medium, is as old as human beings themselves. Since Neolithic peoples painted the inside of caves with scenes of hunts, as well as those of everyday life, and stone age artists carved sculptures of the Earth Goddesses from the material that gave them their name, why wouldn’t they also have used snow to create effigies of the human form (when the weather conditions permitted)?

As snow can be sculpted without the need for tools, it would have been a very appealing material to work in. Ice-age man sought to create images of the idealised human form, which for him meant the maternal, female form – the voluptuous, well-endowed shape of Mother Earth herself. So it is highly likely that the snow sculptures we describe as snowmen actually started out as snowwomen. (It’s uncertain when snowballs were introduced.)

25,000 years later, and we’re still building human figures out of snow, but only if the snow is of the right consistency. As it approaches its melting point snow becomes moist and is more easily compacted, allowing for the construction of large snowballs simply by rolling. Powdered snow will not stick to itself and so is not an ideal building material for snowmen. The best time to build a snowman is the next warm afternoon following a heavy snowfall.

The snowman doubtless became a part of the Christmas festivities, not just because of the wintery time of year at which those celebrations took place, but as part of Christianity’s mass assimilation of seasonal pagan practices, such as the Christmas tree and Father Christmas.

I'm sure it won't surprise anybody to learn that snowmen appear in 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, and they will also appear in 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas, which is into its final two days of funding on Kickstarter.

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: R is for REINDEER

Did you know that a reindeer calf can outrun a man at only one day old, or that the Finns once measured distance in terms of how far a reindeer could run without having to stop for a pee?

The reindeer is the only deer that can be domesticated, and was the first hoofed animal to be domesticated. It provides the nomadic tribes who live within the Arctic Circle (such as the Lapps) with milk, cheese, meat, fat, clothing, footwear, tools (made from the antlers and bones), highly durable bindings (made from the animal’s sinews) and a means of transport.

In Iceland, reindeer meat (or hreindýr) is becoming an increasingly popular Christmas dinner choice, while the Lapp people of Scandinavia believe that taking powdered reindeer antlers increases virility. Reindeer themselves are vegetarians by choice but when when the supply of greenery runs out they will eat anything, and everything, from eggs and shed antlers, to placenta and even rodents!

Reindeer did not enter the Father Christmas story until the nineteenth century, and it was all the fault of the American Episcopalian minister called Clement Clarke Moore, who composed the famous poem An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas (a.k.a. 'Twas the Night Before Christmas), as a Christmas treat for his own children.

In his poem, Moore had a diminutive elf-like Santa pulled in a miniature sleigh by equally tiny reindeer. At one point Santa reels off their now so familiar names, but which were new to those reading the poem when it first appeared in print back in 1823.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

‘Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!’ 

Those same reindeer appear in 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, and also appear in 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas, which is into its final few days of funding on Kickstarter.

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: Q is for Snow QUEEN

The Snow Queen, or Snedronningen in Danish, is an original fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen. The tale was first published on 21 December, 1844, and is about the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kai.

The story is one of Andersen's longest and most highly acclaimed works. It is regularly included in selected tales and collections of his work and is frequently reprinted in illustrated storybook editions for children.

Andersen met the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind in 1840, and fell in love with her, but she was not interested in him romantically, although the two became friends. Legend has it that Andersen was inspired to model the cold-hearted Snow Queen on Lind after she rejected him as a suitor.

More recently, the 2013 Disney film Frozen was inspired by The Snow Queen, and closely followed the original Andersen story early in the film's development.

The Snow Queen appears in 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, and she will also appear in 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas, which is into its final few days of funding on Kickstarter.

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: P is for PERCHTA

Not unlike Krampus the Christmas Devil himself, Perchta is a creature from Alpine myth, a product of the paganism once practised in the Upper German and Austrian regions of the Alps. Once venerated as a goddess, her name may mean "the bright one".

In the folklore of Bavaria and Austria, Perchta was said to roam the countryside at midwinter, and to enter homes during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, but especially on Twelfth Night itself. She would know whether the children and young servants of the household had behaved well and worked hard all year. If they had, they might find a small silver coin next day, in a shoe or pail. If they had not, she would slit their bellies open, remove stomach and guts, and stuff the hole with straw and pebbles!

She was particularly concerned to see that girls had spun the whole of their allotted portion of flax or wool during the year. She would also slit people's bellies open and stuff them with straw if they ate something on the night of her feast day other than the traditional meal of fish and gruel.

I re-imagined Perchta for 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, and she will also appear in her new form in 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas, which is into its final five days of funding on Kickstarter.

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.

      

The Krampus Kalendar: N is for NUTCRACKER

At Christmas time it is not uncommon for many families to attend the only ballet they will see all year. The name of that ballet? The Nutcracker. But how did a ballet about a mechanical device for cracking nuts become such a popular festive tradition?

The story itself upon which the ballet it based – The Nutcracker and the King of Mice, by E. T. A. Hoffman – is older than the version we see portrayed on stage, which is actually an adaptation by the French author Alexandre Dumas, better known for penning such classic novels as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.

The Nutcracker was actually Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s final and least satisfying ballet, after he took on the project with a marked lack of enthusiasm. It is ironic then that it is The Nutcracker that has become one of the most beloved Christmas traditions of the modern age.

The Nutcracker premiered in Tchaikovsky’s native Russia in 1892, but it wasn't until 1944 that an American ballet company decided to perform the entire thing. That year, the San Francisco Ballet took on the task, from then on performing The Nutcracker as an annual tradition.

But it was really George Balanchine who set The Nutcracker on the path to popular fame. In 1954 he choreographed the ballet for a New York company, and not a year has passed since when the ballet has not been performed in New York City.

You may encounter an animated Nutcracker in 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, and possibly in 'TWAS - The Roleplaying Game Before Christmas as well.

   

To find out more about the festive season and its many traditions, order your copy of the Chrismologist's Christmas Explained: Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts today!

The book is also available in the United States as Christmas Miscellany: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Christmas.