You're Dead to Me - Medieval Christmas

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Greg and his guests Miles Jupp and Dr Eleanor Janega go back to the medieval Christmas for this one-off festive special. We look at the history and traditions that have thankfully continued through the ages, like gift-giving and stuffed wild boars (although numbers on stuffed wild boar we're told are down from previous years) and some that have mysteriously fallen off from the radar completely, like the masked carol singers and jellied eels. Research - Lloyd Roberts Script- Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Project Management - Siefe Miyo Edit Producer - Cornelius Mendez

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broad, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC Kids show Horrible Histories. And as it's the most wonderful time of the year, we are back for a one-off festive special on the merriest of subject matters, Medieval Christmas. And to help us digest this feast of facts about the yuletides of yesteryear, I am joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she lectures on medieval history at London School of Economics at the University of London

and is an expert on late medieval sexuality, apocalyptic thought and propaganda. All the good ones. And you may have read her fun new illustrated book, The Middle Ages, A Graphic History. It's Dr Eleanor Janager. Hello, Eleanor. How are you? Hi, Greg. I'm great. Very, very excited to make Christmas slightly weird for everyone. And in Comedy Corner corner he's an actor comedian author and i think shoo-in for future national treasure you'll have heard him on tons of radio including as the host of the news quiz and his list of screen credits is longer than the

hundred years war including rev the durrells the thick of it mock the week have a good news for you would i lie to you what an incredible cv plus he was in a christmas movie the man who invented christmas so he knows about being jolly in the holly. It's Christmas cracker, Miles Jupp. Welcome, Miles. Hello, thank you. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to have you here. I think of you as someone very knowledgeable and learned and wise. So where does history fit in for you? Are you deeply well-read? I'm reasonably well-read. I probably read more fiction, than non-fiction but also I have a thing where

I seem knowledgeable which is presumably a sort of accent and demeanour. So I'm the sort of person people say why didn't you choose the wine although I know nothing about wine. As far as I'm aware your dad was a vicar maybe or at least involved in faith in a pretty professional way is that fair? Yes he profits from religion. It's not megabucks. He's retired now, but he's the United Reformed Church minister. It's quite sort of chilled out congregationalism, I suppose. Yeah, they're quite relaxed. Relaxed and groovy. Yeah, sometimes some of the hymns are slightly too modern. I know that's an opinion, not a fact. What's a Christmas like in the Jupp household? When I was little, I suppose, that would be a working day for Dad.

It would be a sort of a busy day. We don't have a very big family, but we'd all be together. But yeah, going to church obviously would be a part of it. But when you're little, of course, it's just about, you know, you want to see if you've got a full stocking and things like that when you wake up. But there must have been all sorts of religion going on that I wasn't necessarily noticing. I went to a choir school. I wasn't in the choir, but it was a choir school

between the ages of nine and 13, and it was in Windsor Castle. So for me then, Christmas, I was not a chorister, but I was a cross-bearer. And there was this thing that sounds sort of bonkers now, but it was called the Christmas stay-on. And the choristers would stay at school until Christmas Day itself to sing services in St George's Chapel and so when I was maybe 13 I did the stay on to be like an acolyte and a cross bearer in an

Anglican way quite high church to the pomp and walking around at the front of processions and stuff like that that felt very Christmassy I think Christmas has felt less Christmassy ever since then Eleanor I know that you're a huge George Michael fan. So your Christmas is obviously going to be Wham's Last Christmas on the stereo. You've got Czech heritage. So what is the Czech Christmas like? Are you an American Czech as well? Yeah, exactly. So I am a product of immigrants.

And so it's a strange mashup. You know, obviously, I want to celebrate my Lord and Saviour, George Michael, by playing Last Christmas as much as I possibly can. The traditional Czech Christmas, for example, is carp. So you get a carp and you keep it in your bathtub for a couple of days to kind of get the muddy taste out and it's swimming around and you eat it. The thing about that is carp is rank. Sorry to all of my Czech brethren, but that's not something that my family was super huge on. But my family absolutely adores food. So we were often eating goose for Christmas. Oh, is there a stage between the carp swimming in the bath and you eating it?

Would you scoop it out like a bear? Yeah, you got to scoop it and then there's some whacking. I'll do it. Okay. My brother's wife is American and she introduced us to this thing where it's like hiding a pickle. Essentially, there's a decoration that looks like a pickle that gets hidden somewhere around the house and we all have to go and find it. You look baffled. I thought, hi, the pickle is a euphemism for sex. So I'm... How is it? Oh, right. Given the company in which she's prepared to say the phrase, it's time that we all play hunt the pickle. I think it's unlikely it's a euphemism

unless I've misread the rules of the commune. I'm about to adopt this i love this maybe it's not even an american tradition maybe it's not you keep saying it maybe it's something that we're making it into a tradition the nation will hear this on the radio and think right okay i guess we've got a new tradition we've got to do we've got to hide the pickle what i'm absolutely baffled by is if you'd put money on who was going to bring the phrase hide the pickle up on this particular show i'm sure most people would have bet on me and i wanted on the record that it was miles yeah so what do you know that leads us on to the first segment of the podcast it's called the so what do you know this is where i have a guess of what our listeners might know about today's subject

and we're talking about yuletide no Noel, proper Crimbo. We all know what Christmas is. Even if you don't celebrate it, I am 138% certain you know what it is. It's the national holiday in the UK and in many places around the world. But what about its medieval heritage? Well, here, I think maybe we're a little bit more hazy. I think probably you're imagining grand feasting halls decked with boughs of holly. Fa la la la la la la la. And I think maybe in your head it's a roast pig with an apple in its mouth, maybe some mugs of mead, maybe a chilly church service in a cathedral somewhere. But what actually happened? And what's the best way to serve a peacock? These are the questions we need to find out. So let's crack on. Dr. Eleanor, we're talking about Western Europe.

We're not going to talk about the Greek Orthodox Christmas, which is different. But in terms of time, our Christmas is very specifically Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Medieval Christmas. It's a whole slow burn period, isn't it? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's not just the day. It is a period. So it begins really on Christmas itself and then lasts 12 days. You know, the whole five golden rings, we didn't get that from nowhere. So you start out on the 25th of December and then you're going up to Epiphany or Twelfth Night, which is on the 6th of January. So Jesus is theoretically born on Christmas Day and then people slowly gather at the manger. So by the time you get to the 6th of January, the three kings have shown up

to give him presents. But it goes even past that. There's a large festive period that goes all the way through January, and it leads up to what is called Candlemas, also known as the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And that's on the 2nd of February, which marks the end of Christmastime. Wow. Miles, could you go to February 2nd? Can you commit to that kind of level of engagement with Christmas spirit? No, to me, I have to say that seems slightly long. Do you know what I mean? I think that point where you're looking forward to, you know when you start thinking,

when is the first bin collection after Christmas? To me, that seems a vital date. When are we going to get rid of these bottles? That to me seems to be like the end of Christmas, I suppose. The big bin day. And Caldamus is very important in the Catholic liturgical calendar. There is a procession, Eleanor, isn't there? There's an important sort of parade. What happens is that each parishioner marches into the church to attend mass, and they join a big procession holding a candle as an offering to the church. They'll be blessed

by the priests. And these are seen as almost a talisman against bad luck. So they protect against thunderstorms, they ward off demons, they ward off sickness. You would bring those specifically in if people are dying to put next to their bedsides as a purification or blessing. In one way, we think of Epiphany as being the last of the 12 days of Christmas, but people keep all of their sort of Christmas decorations, their bits and bobs, up through candlemas, which I tried last year because everything was so extraordinarily bleak during COVID, so I kept my tree up till candlemas.

And then, yeah, I couldn't get council to take it in the end, so I had to ring up and pay to get it taken away see this miles with his binda he knew this is the thing binda is the sacred end of the calendar miles according to wikipedia you studied divinity at university that's correct that's proper theology right which means that you are the closest thing we have to a pope on this podcast so i'm going to ask you according to pope benedictine the 16th uh when was jesus christ born i'm imagining he was fairly orthodox so round about zero something and day of the year maybe not the 25th of december or you maybe wouldn't be asking it or is it like mastermind when it's a really long question with a simple answer it could be

the 19th the official answer is we don't know. That's literally the Pope's position is we're not sure. When they're having discussions in the Vatican they go well someone's got to call this one surely that's when the Pope goes all right I'll decide otherwise we'll never get to bed. Let's call it the 25th of December. This was a conversation that happened a lot in the Middle Ages the dating of the events in Christ's life and it's Julius Sextus Africanus who's an early church father who declares that Christ conversation that happened a lot in the Middle Ages, the dating of the events in Christ's life. And it's Julius Sextus Africanus, who's an early church father, who declares that Christ had to be conceived on March 25th, which is the anniversary of God creating the earth. And therefore, scroll forward nine months, December 25th, it's as good a date as any. That then gets us into a secondary issue, which is the year. And and miles you've already pointed towards year

zero again that's medieval theology sort of going probably 753 years after the foundation of rome give or take i think it's uh dionysus exiguous who says that but that's not right most scholars would tell you jesus christ was born in the year four or 6 BC. So four years before Christ or six years before Christ because of Herod. Herod was dead by zero. So that's why on this podcast and why many historians use BCE and CE, which means before common era and common era, because AD BC isn't actually accurate. There was a course I did, which is studies of the historical Jesus as a sort of branch of theology. And that's all about dating, I suppose. Things like using, is it called the Histories of Religious Movements, where you're able to date when Gospels are written entirely by the ideas in them.

You can say this is the state that the Johannine community would have got to by, this must have been written 26 years after this happened or whatever, because that's where the ideas were. That's very accurate stuff. That's theology's sort of carbon dating, I suppose. Christianity is a linear religion, right? It's got a beginning, it's got a middle, it's got an end. So God creates the world. We are in the middle bit, kind of after Jesus comes back, and we're waiting for the end, which is the apocalypse. So everybody loves to try to put a date on things. But at the same time, medieval people are super clear that you're not actually going to be able to do that. So they love to fiddle

around with dates. They love to kind of debate things and posit different ideas. But on the whole, they know they're never really going to get to the bottom of it. So it's kind of almost like a parlor game or an intellectual exercise that people partake in. And another thing to kind of keep in mind about Christmas, as you know, something that happens on December 25th, is there is some truth to the fact that why Christmas happens in midwinter is that, well, people like to have festivals in midwinter. It's a bit dark. People would like to have some form of party to stave that off. And there's a long, long history of this all over the world and certainly in Europe as well. The Romans have their big holiday of Saturnalia, pretty big on wine,

women, and song. They really go at it for quite a few days. There is also the generalized Germanic idea of Yule, which is a, you know, quote unquote pagan tradition or Callens. All of these are about feasting. They're about drinking. They're about hanging out with your friends, just having a very, very nice time in what would otherwise be physically a dark part of the year. What the church is really good at and adept at is taking on these ideas, subsuming them into Christianity, and then kind of selling them back to people. The people who are involved in the church know how to sell a religion. Everybody likes a winter holiday, so they take that on board and then they put a layer of Christianity on top of it. Let's stop talking timekeeping.

Let's start talking tinsel, or at least the medieval equivalent. Miles, what do you think is decking the halls? Well, I was wondering that now, but this is purely based on what I've heard so far. The idea that it's things that have a kind of protective thing. It's partly decorative, maybe, but the idea of warding off. So stuff that's still green in December, your non-deciduous stuff. And you're putting that up all around to give you a sort of sense of protectiveness. And it's celebrating the things that are currently alive, I guess. Is there also an insulation aspect to it?

I mean, in the middle of winter, it's got very cold it's got very dark at least we can be warm we can have candlelight if it's if we put stuff that's only just been clipped from a tree it's less flammable i suppose i mean am i being too sort of practical about it we can't i think you're being wonderfully practical don't put dried wood all over the house for heaven's sake it's not that's the stuff that's jammed inside um but the word decking itself decking obviously you know sort of thing you get at b and q to uh hang out in the summer decking the halls with b and q it's christmas why not get down to wicks yeah yeah i mean you're absolutely right it's basically

it's holly and ivy and mistletoe possibly Possibly it's a spiritual thing too. It's a symbol of eternal life, which is, of course, a reference to Christ again. You do see some references, for example, there'll be a whole allegory about holly. Will they say, oh, the red berries symbolize the blood of Jesus Christ. You know, the white berries of mistletoe, they symbolize the purity of the Virgin Mary. But we do know that these are things that had been going on well before Europe. Christianized, everybody loves to put some mistletoe up. Everyone will put Holly and Ivy up because, yeah, I mean, Miles, you hit the nail on the head.

It's alive, isn't it? So that's some green things that you can put up. There's also some sort of pre-Christian connections specifically to mistletoe and specifically in Nordic countries. There is a whole thing about mistletoe in Old Norse sagas. Mistletoe comes up lots and lots in the pre-modern period. It shows up in medicine. How it connects necessarily to how we snog under mistletoe, really unclear, but I can tell you that it was in those halls. It was decking right up there the whole time. Yes, they had decked the halls,

but we weren't sure if they were snogging yet. There's also the story of St. Boniface and his tree, which might be our earliest sort of Christmas tree story, but I don't know. St. Boniface, he is hanging out in the German lands in the 8th century, and he comes upon a group of pagans who worship a giant oak tree. And in order to stop them from doing that and convert them to Christianity, he goes up to

it and he gives it a whack with an axe. And everyone shows up to be like, please don't kill our sacred tree, dude. But then the entire huge tree falls down and it splits into four bits and everyone's like, oh, it's a miracle, homies. I guess I do believe in God. And so basically that's a way of connecting Christianity to trees more generally and a kind of co-opting old pagan things to say, okay, well, like here's Jesus has come. You can still, again, you can still have your tree but we're christianizing it and saint boniface is directly linked to that let's talk about the weather outside uh miles at christmas we have plenty of songs about a certain type of weather do you hope for a white christmas i hope for a white christmas because yeah the children get very excited about uh tobogganing and slating and that sort of thing. I expect rain. Proper British answer, yeah.

But I do, yeah. I think snow has... It also sort of calms people down a bit. Suddenly people think, oh, we can't go anywhere, can we? So that means less people are driving about and what have you. But I think also just what snow does to a landscape is a really glorious thing and it makes you see... In a way that mist means that you only get to sort of

pick out certain parts of a landscape. I do find it sort of beautiful and i like putting the boots on and trumping through it my what my children love is just like when little lakes and pools freeze and they just get their willies on again and they say they actually say how hard it is to get children out of the house sometimes but they're like oh can we put our boots on and go and break some ice they want to go and break ice you know like like we do it to the christmas works parties i was gonna say make small talk can we why don't we go out and ask people how their year's been and you know no they literally want to go and break ice and they absolutely love it so hopefully yeah a bit of bit of bit of frosting bit of snow but but I'm just expecting rain. I really am.

In that regard, you're probably not far off. I think most of us probably anticipate the medieval Christmas as white and crispy, you know, lots of snow everywhere, people huddled around the fire. But that's not right, Eleanor. We've got what we call the medieval warm period, which lasts from about 900 to 1300 or so. And stuff just gets a bit warmer. We are not exactly sure as to why it was planetary. Maybe some volcanoes erupted and it changed things.

We're not exactly sure, but we know from tree ring dating or looking at pollen in bogs, which is something that people much cleverer than I can do, we know that there was just a lot more going on at the time. So it means that for ages and ages in the medieval period, nobody really connects Christmas with snow. In the labors of the year, you'll see pictures of December or pictures of January. And it's definitely cold, but it's often quite gray.

So the labor that you do in December to get ready for Christmas is you kill your pig that you fattened up so that you can have a nice Christmas ham. Brilliant. And you'll see pictures of people just in a grey field, like killing this pig, really going for it. So the sky's grey, the ground's grey, there's nothing else. And then in January, we're all indoors having our nice Christmas feast, and the snow shows up in February. So that's the sort of thing that shows up after Candlemas. And that's when you get your cosy snow times. And it's not really until the Victorian period that we start associating Christmas with snow. Okay, so what you're saying is that Valentine's cards should be snow-encrusted

people being hit in the face by snowballs. Make a snowball in the shape of a heart and just, you know, really violently assault people with your love. The classic metaphor for Tinder, isn't it? The classic metaphor for Tinder, isn't it? So no snowball fights at Christmas. Miles, do you partake of a cheeky chocolate every morning with your advent calendar? I don't, but our house is full of chocolate advent calendars because I have five children. That's about 15 minutes of the morning is spent passing everyone their things and then carefully putting them away again.

And also you try and keep everyone involved. So you keep saying, and what was today's chocolate? It was a star. What was today's chocolate to another child? It was a star. Because they're all the same. They've all got the same calendar. But things like big tubs of sweets that you get,

it's irresistible, really. Malteser teasers are better than normal Maltesers, aren't they? And yet it's only at Christmas where you get a good sort of fistful of them. While everyone else is opening presents, you think, I think I'll go and steal all the Malteser teasers teasers okay so i'm getting a sense of the christmas in the jump household is you breaking into the christmas cupboard and i don't want to describe it as every man for himself but essentially yeah this is how we think of the advent period eleanor we've got advent calendars and they start on December the 1st.

And that's not how it worked in the medieval world. They had Advent, of course, and any Christian listening now will know about Advent as a movable feast. Literally, what is the Advent period? So Advent, one calculates by saying it's got to be four Sundays before Christmas. It means that it also varies in length, right? Because if you've got a Christmas on a Saturday, then that's a really long Advent. Sometimes Advent starts in November. Basically, what you're supposed to be doing during the Advent period is prepping yourself for Christmas and the birth of Christ. We kind of associate Advent with Christmas itself. You know, it's this chocolate time. We have lots of office parties. Exactly the opposite for medieval people.

They are saying that this should be a time of fasting, real restraint, ideally no shagging. So you've got Advent, which is like the Lent of Christmas, if you will. And then you get to Christmas and then Christmas is when it's party time. So, you know, that's when you have your sex, right? It's during Christmas. As a September baby, I don't think this could be the case in the URC. Yeah, I'm a September baby too. And it's a very common time for arriving into the world, which means that nine months before people were having some fun times. My sister herself is a September 25th baby.

So, you know, there it is. But you hit on something here though, Miles, which is that the church can go ahead and tell you anything they want about Advent. How that actually pans out in terms of medieval people's lives really depends, though. Sure, if everybody did what the church says, then there would be no children born in the medieval period in September before the 25th. And that's just not the case now, is it? But you are meant to think of Advent as a preparatory time for Christmas. And that is when you get your drink and your shag and your revelry on, and you need to earn it through

a kind of spiritual process of contemplation. Is that how your Advent is, Miles? No, I would say not. No, not really. Crikey. No, I think of Christmas as being, not really. Crikey. No, I think of Christmas as being sort of quite frantic because there's that thing, isn't there? And I only know this because it was like the sitcom I used to be in, Rev. There was like my character was very sort of po-faced and I remember he having this thing in the Christmas special.

If I have to tell one more person that it isn't Christmas until Christmas Day itself, it is technically Advent, I shall go sweet bananas, was the thing he had to say. I tried telling the checkout girl at Safeways and she could not have been less interested. So it's obviously, yeah, it's that time of parties and sort of frantic thing or sort of charity lunches and whatever. It does seem preparatory about it, but also as a parent,

it's quite sort of panicky. You look at the date and you think, we haven't done anything yet or we haven't, you know, get to the Christmas evening. We ought to put decorations up shouldn't we or or whatever it is buy some presents from a local petrol station yeah yes exactly by the time it gets to christmas day itself you're kind of sort of shattered by the experience that's why i marked big bin day on the calendar in the kitchen because you think this is what it's all leading for this is when it will finally remember what this is all about it's 12th day of Christmas starts on Christmas runs up to

the 6th of January but we also have these other very important feast days in December don't we we've got the feast of the Immaculate Conception on the 8th there's the feast of Saint Nicholas I mean he's going to turn into Santa Claus later but at this point he's a Turkish saint what are the other feasts that are happening in December? One cannot stress enough how incredibly important the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is. Everyone tends to hear Immaculate Conception and they think that that's when, you know, God knocked Mary up. No, no, no, no. It's about Mary herself being born without original sin, which allows her to give birth to Jesus. But you also have St. Stephen's Day on the 26th. You've got St. John the Evangelist Day on the 27th. You've got the Holy Innocence on the 28th.

You have the Feast of the Circumcision on the 1st of January, and you've got Epiphany on the 6th. And then Candlemas, as we've already said, that's the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Another thing to keep in mind about Advent generally is that St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who the dogs are named after, he says that you need to be using Advent to think about the three comings of Christ. So Christ being born at Bethlehem, Christ in our hearts daily, and then also when Christ is going to come at the end of the world, which is like Miles' bin day, when he comes in to kind of clean everything up. So there's a lot of religious stuff that you're supposed to be doing and contemplating at the time. And, you know, we still see a lot of hallmarks of this around the shop. So, you know, me as a Czech person, St. Nicholas Day is like a really,

really big deal for us. And so a Mikuláš, as we say, and you get stockings and, you know, you get presents in your shoe. And this is connected to Saint Nicholas of Smyrna, who's considered a patron saint of children. So one of the things that he did while he was alive is there was a dad who didn't have enough money for his three daughters' dowries. So instead of getting them married off, he was going to have them all become sex workers. And Saint Nicholas thought that that wasn't probably a great idea. So what he did is he snuck a bunch of coins into the girls' shoes, which meant that they had money for a dowry so that they didn't have to become sex workers. And that's where the whole St. Nicholas giving things in shoes

slash stockings comes from. But he also has a great miracle, which is that there was a famine and somebody killed and was salting down three boys to eat like ham. And St. Nicholas busted in and was like, absolutely not. And he blessed them and brings them all back to life, uncures them. And that, my friends, is how you become the patron saint of children. He cures them by uncuring them. There's a certain swagger to all of the saints in your telling of them. Not on my watch, dude. Is that the 6th of December, St. Nicholas Day?

That's right. I do recommend to any listeners, if you ever have the wherewithal to get down to the Czech Republic for specifically actually the 5th of December, that's when we have giant street parties and everyone is dressed up like angels and demons and St. Nicholas. And you go around either giving candy to kids or trying to jump out from behind a corner and scare them, which is great. And, you know, we definitely know that things like this take place in the medieval period. So as solemn, quote unquote, as Advent is supposed to be, people still have parties. So who's to say what's right or wrong? If St. Nicholas wants you to party, then you can go for that, right? He's very convincing, St. Nick.

He turns up and he's like, I've got some money for you. You, you need a party. Come on, come with me. It's sort of like Fun Bobby in Friends. Yes. Why don't we make those coffees Irish? You know, that's his kind of, that's his vibe. 24th of December is also sometimes known as the Feast of Adam and Eve.

So you can have Adam and Eve Eve, I suppose, which would be the 23rd But also another thing is the Yule Log Do you know what the Yule Log was back in medieval times? Is it to do with creating heat? You choose your best log and burn it? It's not far off, actually We're not entirely sure if this is medieval, Eleanor I mean, this is definitely later and it's possibly medieval, isn't it?

We're into the realms of maybes here We We certainly know that it's early modern. And who's to say what's medieval and early modern? It's vibes. It's vibes, everybody. But the Yule log, the idea is you go find your biggest possible log and you bring it into your big grand fireplace. And it needs to be a log that is so large that it's going to be able to burn through all 12 days of Christmas. And it's considered bad luck to let the Yule log go out. And oftentimes what they will do is they'll keep a little bit of last year's Yule log, and then they'll use it to light the new Yule log. And so it's kind of like your Christmas tree from last year being your kindling, right? This is a big grand thing. And yeah,

it's representative of the fact that everything is going to be warm and cozy and you're going to have a nice time during this cold part of the year. I was going to ask that about the practicalities of that. A log that is big enough to burn for 12 days would be gargantuan, wouldn't it? I mean, wood burns so quickly. This is the province, obviously, of the nobility. So you've got to be the sort of person who can command someone to go get a big old log bring it in and then you've got to have a fireplace that's going to you know accommodate that but don't tell them that we keep we keep changing the logs when they're

asleep and that sort of thing just just don't keep telling them it's the same log that is your job nobody speak of this but we're changing the logs exactly it's like when your child's hamster dies and you you swap it out for another one and go, same hamster, darling. It's the same hamster. This hamster's been burning for ages. Have I gone completely mad or in somewhere in Europe? Is it Spain? Is there a Christmas tradition that is called Mr. Pooh? No, I've heard of this. I've heard of a caca, I think in Spain. Is there a kind of elf on a shelf? Is it? Yes, I've definitely heard of this being a thing that happens in Spanish nativity scenes

where it's really common to have a guy who's having a crap in the corner. What's that guy doing? He's always here. He's always here every year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's part of a nativity scene or a nativity play. A nativity scene.

I think play is less so, but, you know, so you'll have a little figury that you kind of put in the corner, yes. I'm trying to picture that as part of a nativity play or whatever. You sort of emigrate. No, we settled in well. I think the only time, the big surprise actually was Christmas when we went to our first nativity play and, God, there was this guy in the corner.

Well, I watched the video back. and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I think it's called the Cagana, which I think is the crapper in a Catalan nativity scene. So, I guess in Barcelona, there is someone taking a poo in the scene, which is charming. You know, there's that thing in Twelfth Night, some people think the character Fabian was there because the actor who's playing one of the other roles

couldn't be there at that particular moment and it had to be filled in. And it does seem odd to have a person, if you've got a scene where you've already got loads of animals, it seems to be odd to ask a human to be the person that relieves themself when you sort of think, couldn't the donkey do that? Someone's at a meeting said, no, we need something for Clive to do.

I mean, that brings me on to the nativity. Do we associate it with Francis of Assisi? Yeah, bang on. So we think that St. Francis of Assisi in about 1223 is the one who came up with the idea of doing a live nativity scene. But nativity scenes are different in the medieval period, once again, because of how Christmas is different. So they would start out with having baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph in the stable, and then they would grow over time until eventually the Magi show up on Epiphany.

Basically, what that's connected to and why St. Francis came up with it, it was about emphasizing the poverty of Jesus. So underlining the fact that he was born in the stable, he's just like a normal poor person. And instead of thinking about him as always, you know, a king, always a prince, always quite ennobled like the rest of the church, because St. Francis of Assisi, apostolic poverty, that was his thing. But also the animals thing, St. Francis, he's patron saint of animals, isn't he? He's the one who, so there's also a treat animals kindly kind of vibe, I suppose, as well. But also, Eleanor, we need to talk about, I guess, what most people were doing in terms of entertainment. And that brings us on to mumming plays and Christmas plays, miracle plays.

These are pretty full on, aren't they? Oh, absolutely. So Christmas plays, hugely important part of the medieval celebration of Christmas. So there are mummers plays, which are kind of like a medieval pantomime, and that involves putting on masks, and you go out into the streets and people's homes in order to do plays. They're pretty popular. And the reason we know that they're popular is there's a couple attempts to ban them. So we know here in England, in Yorkshire, there is a specific mumming custom, specifically on New Year's, which for them, that's Christmas, right? And so people would put on disguises and come into your house. Then the people in the house would have to guess who it was.

And then if you don't guess who it is, then you have to give them booze and food. If you do guess who it is, then everyone just goes, hey, ha ha, got you, woo, mumming. And then they kind of like run off to the next house and they try it again we've got carolers who who basically break into your house and say hey who am i yeah give me booze that's that's fairly invasive yes that's a sort of protection racket sort of ring to it i have to say yeah a little bit it's a bit trick or treat but it's a bit more like they come into your house it's a bit scary yes you're not allowed to guess when they're on street side you really have to wait until they're actually sort of camped in your sitting room but then there's also what we call in english the miracle plays yeah and these are a little bit more state and

it kind of starts off with priests and monks going on tours to do stage plays in the vernacular to let people know what generalized religious stories are. Eventually, the church is like, you are not actors. You are a priest. Please stop doing this. Because the priests are just so into it and they're putting on these absolutely huge, elaborate productions and they're like, guys, you're supposed to be doing mass. Knock this off. What kind of jumps up in that place are civic guilds who will do Christmas plays. So, you know, the Pepperers or the Mercers or whoever will say, ha ha, here is our Christmas production of various plays. They follow a kind of cycle throughout the year. So you, in theory,

start at Easter and then you get around to Christmas. But in Christmas, everybody really, really has big ones that are a bit more funny. And what they are meant to do is kind of put forward the idea of misrule over the medieval period. So things being a bit topsy-turvy and the traditional hierarchies being suspended. It's kind of linked a little bit to plays about Adam and Eve at the time, because it's like, okay, well, Adam and Eve famously, you know, lived in a time before social norms, very naked. And, you know, I think that you will be unsurprised to learn that eventually the church was like, could you stop with the naked?

This is getting a bit much, but the spoiler alert, they did not stop. Again, the church can try whatever they want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is going to stop wanting to go see the play where you see a wang. So, yeah. The Christmas wang, as we all love. You know, traditional to hide the pickle. Show the pickle. Who knows? There's no hiding this pickle. It's very visible.

With the sort of mumming and things, there's a community aspect to that, isn't there? The point of it is it's not a thing necessarily done by professional actors, that it is a thing done by the community or whatever. And if a whole load of priests want to put on a show, I mean, crikey, why stop them? I've never seen Drag Race, but i imagine that's what it's like they're all in frocks anyway aren't they so yeah why not that's right okay so we've got

mumming sounds a bit terrifying we've got mystery plays with nudity and all sorts of things it's getting a bit wild and the fortress we've also got King Henry II's favourite Christmas entertainment. So Henry II was alive in the 12th century, in the 1100s. He had a favourite jester called Roland. And what do you think Roland's favourite gag was? Was it mucky? I mean, would it be considered acceptable today? I don't think it would be acceptable, but I think it would be funny.

Oh, no. I think it involves nudity or using the digestive system for comic effect. Oh, yes. Yes. You're closer there. Yeah. Oh, no. Would he perform by the fireside, as it were? Relieve himself onto a hot grate? I don't know. On the other end, he was known as Roland the Farter. And his act was that he did one jump, one whistle and one fart every Christmas. And for that, he was rewarded with a very nice house in Suffolk. And this was his big Christmas.

This is what Christmas was building towards for King Henry II, was to watch Roland do his little jump, whistle and fart. And the Latin word for a fart, Miles? Is it to do with flatulence? That is one of them. Flatus? Exactly, that's right. But in this medieval

english uh this version the the word is bumbulum which i think is delightful you did one little bumble so he showed him his bumbulum and uh and yes he was given a given a house for this so there we go so that's amazing that's incredible stipend goodness me it's nice work if you can get it yeah you know like 20 years ago people would say, you know, you don't make any money playing computer games

to children, whatever. Now people do exactly that to do it. It's the sort of time. I don't think you're going to make a living out of farting,

young man. Guess what? Good news, mum and dad. I've just been awarded a stipend. I get grace and favour accommodation

for doing one fart at Christmas. What did you say it was? The hop and a... One jump, one whistle, one fart. One church, one voice. Like the sort of early triple jump.

Yes, exactly. The sort of Jonathan Edwards of his day. Yeah, you could see this in the Royal Variety Performance, couldn't you? Entertaining the Royal family. And we should also talk about caroling. Now, of course, caroling these days it's very nice it's very you know people sing in harmony and they stand around and it's very jolly and they might come to your door

but mostly they tend to be in train stations but in medieval times the caroling is a bit more raucous really eleanor isn't it it's a bit more um yeah again the church is a bit like can you not yeah basically the entire story of medieval christ church is a bit like, can you not? Yeah, basically, the entire story of Medieval Christmas is the church being like, can you tone it down a notch? And everyone's saying no. So caroling has almost nothing to do with singing from a medieval perspective. And it's more about dancing. So you know, you'll see lots of little illustrations of people kind of like joining hands and having a little dance around, you know, maybe they've lots of little illustrations of people kind of like joining hands and having a little dance around. You know, maybe they've got a little deer head on.

And they are basically down to drink and have a dance around the place. It's more like you go, again, door to door doing some dancing. Maybe knock in the window, demand booze, and dance back out again. You know, there's a lot more, you know, petty crime involved in the medieval Christmas traditions. What can I say? An idea of drunken intimidation, I think, is a Christmas tradition carried into city centres to this day, isn't it? The first ever carol in the English language. The lines are,

Of this mansion here my toast, drink it well. Each must drain his cup of wine, and I be the first will toss of mine. Thus I advised, here then I bid to you all wass cursed be he who do not say drink hail so it's a drinking song i'd love to know what would be your ideal drinking song for the for the christmas carol service if you had to swap one in i suppose it would be having to down a shot every time you hear the word hosanna a lot of very drunk choristers uh well i like a midnight mass i think there's something quite fun in that and there is a sort of always people that arrive just before it starts that have piled out of a pub and into the back of a church and bring slightly lighter fire under the whole thing energy wise a bit more raucous yeah yeah a bit of danger we need to

move on from the boozing to the feasting. Christmas food now, of course, is, we all know what Christmas food is. There's a variety. You go for a goose, which is quite Dickensian, actually. But we're going to talk about food back in the medieval period. What is the kind of classic meal? So, I mean, from a perspective of what we really know a ton about, which is rich people stuff generally, perspective of what we really know a ton about, which is rich people stuff generally, one of the big centerpieces is the boar's head, often trotted out in really noble households. And there are a

number of reasons for this. First of all, is that everybody loved to hunt a boar. Rich people are extraordinarily into hunting. And in particular, they like to kill boars because it's really difficult. It's not just about eating the boar. It's also about this big form of display. So what you do is you take the boar's head, you then remove all of the skin, you cook the boar's head, and then you kind of stuff it full of fruits, spices. And then you take the skin, boil it up and put it back on over the top. Then you take some charcoal, you really rough it up, and you make it look like the boar is still alive. Yeah. So you want to put like little hairs on there.

It's like the equivalent of ladies doing their eyebrows now, right? You get some charcoal on. False lashes. Yeah. So you really want it to look as though it is kind of covered in its own natural skin. You put some little sprigs of rosemary for tusks. That's very cute. And then there's a big procession while it's brought out. Another huge one is peacock. And peacock is a lot

of times specifically associated with royal people. And again, it's the same sort of thing. So you skin the bird with the feathers intact, right? Then you roast the peacock and then you reattach the skin over the top of it, stuffing it with, you know, whatever you can get your hands on that's nice and spicy, you know, maybe some apples, some currants, some raisins, as much cinnamon and ginger as you've got in town. And then you bring it out in a big display to put this full peacock on the table. And then obviously that is extraordinarily fancy and everyone goes full peacock on the table. And then obviously that is extraordinarily fancy and everyone goes, peacock?

Miles, have you ever skinned a peacock and reinserted its body back into its skin? Sounds like a lot of admin. It does sound like a, yes, it sounds like a sort of Thomas Harris sort of novel, doesn't it? It's terrifying. Now that sort of reconstructed

sort of way people cook and things, you know, it's a lot of effort, obviously, to make up the, you know, to think you sit down and you've given the sort of boar really sort of lovely smok cook and things you know it's a lot of effort obviously to make up the you know to think you sit down you've given the sort of ball really sort of lovely smoky eyes or i don't know why it hasn't sort of been extended that if you could go to a sort of a sort of contemporary steak restaurant and what they've done is they've cooked the meat but then they've then they've inserted all the different cuts back into the skin of a cow or whatever it might be it says it does sound like quite a fun way to eat, I have to say.

The defining thing of the peacock is the feathers. So if you take those away, you're just left with, well, what's this? This is just sort of, you know, some sort of bird meat, isn't it? So you wouldn't, if you didn't have the feathers, you'd be like, oh, you know, what the hell are we eating here? True. Peacock Twizzlers would be very disappointing, wouldn't they? Breaded peacock, you're like, yeah, fine, whatever. The other main Christmassy food, I i think would be a particularly soggy pie this is something that ordinary people might eat as well because you too could make a soggy pie um so the reason the reason that the pies are soggy is that the pie-ness is

not what's important what they do is they take the dough and make it into really interesting shapes so you may make a little duck or you make a little fish. So like say you can't afford a peacock, maybe you can make a little peacock out of dough, right? So here the crust is just for show. And what it does is it contains just a feeling that you're going to then eat as sort of a stew. So think about it when you get a really disappointing pie now that's just like a pastry top. It's It's doing the same thing. Basically inside, it's like the precursor to a mince pie that we have now. So there's a lot of meat, there's fruit. It's going to be really highly spiced.

And I mean, to be clear, spice is really big in the medieval period. You've got spices all over Europe that have come from as far away as what is now Indonesia. We see nutmeg showing up. We see ginger showing up. We see galangal showing up along the Silk Roads and along the silk roads and

into the middle east they make it all the way up here to england after some people go on crusade and they're like oh i really don't quite like that okay thank you but you know you might have then the meat in there be fish or eels there's a lot more fish and eel oh no i love eel oh no eel pie is uh that to me it sounds like a yeah. A lovely bit of smoked eel served with cold vodka. I'm outnumbered by eel fans. Absolutely cracking breakfast. Goodness me. It's been fine.

Well, you can have the eel pies. I'm going to stick with the rishaway, I think it was called, wasn't it? Yeah. It's a Tudor one called rishaway, and that's when you then have an even fancier case, which is like sugar and saffron. And you enclose all the fruit, and you fry it. That's what I want. Are there things to which they would add spices just because they had spices that we wouldn't conceivably what would be spice then that we wouldn't dream of spicing yeah basically everything so you know one of the

earliest medieval recipes for a lasagna for example involves no tomato or anything at all like that it's a bunch of cheese raisins and cinnamon and pasta. So just going at it with everything, you'd be like, this Weetabix has got a bit of a kick, hasn't it? Yes. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. I mean, spices are incredibly expensive. They're also medicinal, aren't they?

They're also understood to be good for you, to help with digestion, but also to help fight disease. In terms of kings, we've got in 1213, King John, who's obviously one of the sort of crap English kings who's notorious for Magna Carta, but his guests ate 400 head of kings, we've got in 1213 King John, who's obviously one of the sort of crap English kings who's notorious for Magna Carta, but his guests ate 400 head of pork, 3,000 fowl, 15,000 herring,

10,000 eels, that's 10,000 too many, 100 pounds of almonds, 2 pounds of spices and 66 pounds of pepper. 66 pounds, that's imported from India. Are these career statistics or is this like one Christmas? One period, this is one big shop. They've gone down to the big shop and they've got in. Have you got eels? Yeah, we've got eels. How many? I need 10,000.

I'll have to look it up back. And then the other thing I suppose we need to mention is brawn. Miles, have you heard of brawn before? Yes, I have. I had it, enjoyed it. Oh, okay. I've definitely had it without asking exactly what it was. As far as we can tell, it's sort of boiled, deboned meat, but served in vinegar and wine and ale and cider,

sometimes set in a jelly. It's sort of preserved and pickled almost sometimes, isn't it? It's kind of corned beef. Kind of corned beefy, kind of spammy. And it's kind of then spread on bread. But yeah, brawn shows up a lot. And we know that brawn is something that is enjoyed across classes. So whether you're a king or you're a peasant, odds are at Christmas,

you're going to spice things up a little bit of brawn. Lovely, jubbly. We've done the food, but I think maybe we need to look now at gift giving. Is that a Christmassy thing? In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, there's a gift giving scene, but it's not at Christmas, is it? It's New Year. Yeah, there's a gift giving scene, but it's not at Christmas, is it? It's New Year. Yeah, that's right. So the idea of giving and exchanging Christmas gifts vaguely varies

depending on where you're from. So a lot of it is connected to Epiphany and the 6th of January, because the Magi show up and they give the baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And indeed, there's places in Europe where that tradition remains true. So for example, our Spanish friends, in addition to our Catalan friends having a guy who poos in the corner of the nativity, our Spanish friends exchange gifts on Epiphany, not on Christmas Day. But also we think that there was some gift giving on New Year's, which is connected to the old Callens custom. Callens comes from the Roman traditions because it's the first day of the ancient Roman month that basically, so the idea is that days are counted backwards from the Ides to the Callens. So it is linked into kind of Roman ideas about

dates and times. So you would kind of like give and receive gifts more specifically in January. But it's connected through ideas about the Magi or older traditions from pre-Christian times. And it doesn't have anything to do yet with Santa Claus or indeed St. Nicholas. So, you know, St. Nicholas is still just out here reviving children. He's not going to bring you any presents. He's too busy uncuring kids who've been turned into ham. Christmas is celebrated in the Greek Orthodox Church on, I think, January 7th. The other thing we do need to talk about, and this is one of my favourite things,

have you ever heard of boy bishops, Miles? Yeah, were they sort of just pre-Britpop? They were kind of... They had that very distinctively sort of Manchester sound. Yeah. No, I've not heard of the boy bishops. I'm trying to get the vibe here. Is it deliberately like, oh, we'll give kids roles of serious responsibility? Not so much of like a serious responsibility in theologians. It's more connected again to St. Nicholas Day. So, you know,

those uncured boys, he's the patron saint of children. And so for the liturgy on St. Nicholas's Day, then you choose a boy bishop. And the boy bishops are usually chosen from the choir boys. So, you know, you're edge in there, Miles. You almost made it in. Sorry about it. But you would be chosen there. Not that one. He's an acolyte.

Put him down. Cannot be a boy bishop. Cannot be a boy bishop. So, you know, they kind of then preside over the cathedral from the end of services on St. John the Evangelist's Day on the 27th to, you know, Mass on the Feast of the Holy Innocents on the 28th. So the Feast of the Holy Innocents, that celebrates, you know, all the children who died. So sometimes they deliver a sermon, which is kind of cute. And then at the same time, the roles are reversed. So then the clergy scoot off to the choir. Boy bishops, though, that's a real sweet job. It's not just, you know, giving a sermon and wearing a hat. You also get gifts, you get money. So the boy bishop, it's not just a free position, you get eight pounds,

16 shillings and two pence, which is actually an extraordinary amount of money at the time. And a silk purse thrown in. So if you can't get the farting position, go in for the boy bishop, start early. And that's the way. That's a bunch of cash for a kid. I mean, what's he going to spend it on? An Xbox?

There's nothing to spend that much money on if you're 10 or whatever. Some big, big logs for the fire. Job swapping. It sounds like one of those things they'd sort of do for children in need, doesn't it? In a hurry kind of thing. Oh, let's get a whole load of newsreaders to sing Back for Good or whatever.

Let's get some children to run a cathedral for a month. Miles, I mean, obviously I'm sure your children are very well behaved and adorable, but I'm imagining children absolutely abusing this power. It does seem extraordinary. Yes, I don't think much would be left in the collection plate by the time they got back to them. It's true. It changes over time, at least in England. So at first, you know, you kind of elect a boy bishop and then eventually the clergy are like, I'm sorry, no. And they kind of pick one

and appoint him based on qualifications. So, you know, basically you have to be a long serving member of the choir. So it's the older boys. You have to be considered quote useful, right? But you also have to be good looking and a singer. So George Michael Shewan, he's going to be, you know, obviously he would have been right up there. But, you know, you have to be considered kind of tractable enough that it's not going to get too, too wild. But, you know, there is an indication by the fact that there is this movement towards appointing rather than election that for a while it did indeed get kind of wild. Yeah. You know, boys will be boys. Is it sort of enforced as well? I mean, can you opt out of it or you just suddenly one day you're

made to be... Your childhood is basically stolen because you've been appointed unexpectedly a bishop. Or can Steve come out and play football? Steve can't play football, actually. He's a bishop. He's actually got to go to a diocesan lunch. Oh, right. Okay, fair enough.

It seems slightly unfair, I have to say. There's a lot of pressure for a young man. You're going through changes, your body's changing, your voice is deepening, and suddenly you've got to give a sermon. You know, squeaky voice like, hello, and I'm very... I'm very... Thank you for coming. I'm very pleased to be here. At Salisbury Cathedral, the boy bishop would be expected

to spend several weeks travelling through the district, feasting, visiting the homes of the rich, and the rich people would find it hilarious to receive religious instruction from a choir boy. So it's all a big kind of gag. It's a bit kind of like, tell me something else I shouldn't do. So the idea is that there's a Christian message behind all of this. It's called the exaltation of the humble. So the idea is that, you know, at the end of the world, in God's eyes, we're all equal. So the mighty can fall in importance, the innocent are raised above. And it's also about, again, the undoing of the slaughter of the firstborn by Herod when Jesus was born. Eventually, the practice is brought to an end by Henry VIII, one of our least fun kings.

And this is probably because of the break from Rome and Catholicism and, you know, this idea that Catholicism has too much excess. But also it just might be that it fell out of fashion because we had better actors. So he didn't have to, like, torture a small boy. But I love the idea of a small boy suddenly being given a really serious job

and saying, right, go on, get on with it. It feels like the plot of a Hallmark Christmas movie. Yes. A small child who's suddenly put in charge of an entire town. Could you stay behind after class, please, Jenna? I've had an email. You're now the transport minister. That's not a bad idea. If you think how much more socially responsible young people are than people perhaps of other ages, including the Radio 4 demographic.

The topsy-turviness of this, the inversion of putting children in charge and taking the clergy and putting them in the choir and everyone having to swap roles and the jester being the guy doing the farting in front of the king. Everything's a bit naughty and a bit upside down. And we see that also in a little bit of the food, of course. We get the king of the bean and the queen of the pea. This is something I know from French Christmas. This is an epiphany, Twelfth Night thing. It's a sort of cake.

Yeah, that's right. So you bake a cake with either a pea or a bean in it, depending on how you're gendering your guests. And then you slice up the cake. And then you take a kid, you put them underneath the table where everyone has their slice of cake. And the master of the house then says that the kid is supposed to pick people to look at their slice of cake. And the master of the house then says that the kid is supposed to pick people to look at their slice of cake in order and eat it. And then this goes on until someone finds that they have the pea or the bean in their slice. So if you have the pea or the bean, then you become either the king of the bean or the queen of the pea. And you then become the king and queen of the company in general. And you know, everyone has a big feast, drinks a lot, has a really nice time.

Interestingly, Edward III's being king one year was also anointed as what we call the Lord of Misrule. Now, I mean, that's a job for you, Miles. I mean, it screams Lord of Misrule when I look at you and your lovely scarf. I'm all about the chaos. Yeah, that's right. You are the closest thing we have to the Joker. You are the anarchist who lives with the drama. I spend so much of my life just appealing for calm. I'm really not sure that it would be quite the switcheroo to suddenly find myself being Lord of Misrule. But yeah, do you know what the hell? I'll go for it myself being Lord of Misrule. But, yeah, do you know what the hell?

I'll go for it. The Lord of Misrule is a catchy title for, I suppose, sort of Christmas jester, really. Your job is to make sure everyone's having some fun, but also it's a little bit naughty. It's a little bit, you know. Okay, guys, eyes on the fireplace. Watch this. And in Scotland, the Lord of Misrule was known as the Abbot of Unreason, which I absolutely love. The Lord of Misrule is, again, about this topsy-turvy nature where someone who doesn't usually have power is given power in order to set the tone for the party.

Yeah, exactly. And it's really interesting because it's kind of a tag team from the boy bishop. So you have the boy bishop up until the 27th at the Feast of the Holy Innocents. And then on the 28th, bang, you got your Lord of Misrule. And then an adult is kind of like overseeing the rowdiness of Christmas festivities. Miles, if you had to be appointed Lord of Misrule now, what would be your topsy-turvy Christmas game? I'd get everyone to get really hammered. We would order the children out into the streets to do the hard work, which is going around asking people to turn off their idling engines and stop parking on double yellow lines and saying to people much older than

them you can't just sort of put your hazards on and double park this is a high street stop it uh so that's wouldn't that be exciting but there'd be a lot of you know uh i think guys let's be crazy let's all get drunk and watch the ashes so cricket is is your vibe cricket and traffic safety yeah if that's not an attack on the establishment uh i don't know what is the nuance window it's time now for the nuance window this is where miles and i have a little bit of eggnog a bit of mulled wine we have have a sit down, we have a listen, and Eleanor gets two minutes to tell us anything we need to know about the medieval Christmas and how we should think about it. So without much further ado, Dr. Eleanor, can we have the nuance window, please? We've kind of given specifics about what ideally a Christmas is supposed to look like, you know, on the part of a church, on the part of royal people, things like that. And we have to also take this with a grain of salt at all times.

We know more about rich people, right? Because rich people are the ones that stuff gets written about. Rich people are the ones who are literate. So a lot of the time, what we're talking about when we talk about traditions and festivals like this is a very, very small segment of the population who get to enjoy Christmas in this particular way. In the medieval period, and indeed into the early modern period, 80% of all Europeans are actually peasants. And they're not getting a boar's head. That's not how it works for them. You know, they might have a pie, they probably have some brawn. They're definitely getting drunk and they're reveling and, you know, they are being mummers and things like that. But they are not going to be part of the Yule log, queen of the pea sort of style of life. But another thing that I think that people should really take from medieval Christmas, in which I'm really passionate about myself, is this idea of thinking about Christmas as a long period of time.

Because I think that what we tend to do is we conflict Advent with Christmas, which again, it is not. And by the time we hit Christmas, you get to Boxing Day and everyone's like, okay, throw it all out, put the tree on the street, start over, we're done here. And that leads to a lot of disappointment on Christmas Day itself. Start thinking about Christmas as at least the 12 days, my friends, just let it flow, let it happen to you. And thinking of it that way also means that it opens you up to a lot more chilled out celebrations. It doesn't put so much pressure on Christmas Day to be quote unquote perfect. And it means that you can get together with friends

over a long period of time and have a really, really great time. And I think the minute you start thinking about things in that medieval way, Christmas as a long, relaxed period, then that just brings the stress level down. And I think that we could all agree, not just Miles, that we could use a little bit of that around Christmas. Beautiful. Thank you. Some excellent advice. Let's all enjoy Christmas forever. Eternal Christmas all year round. So what do you know now? It's time now to see how much our comedian, Miles, has remembered. It's time for the quiz.

This is the So What Do You Know Now. Miles, I happen to know that you won an episode of Celebrity Mastermind, so you've already proven yourself to be a master brain. I've also lost an episode of Celebrity Mastermind as well. Right, I didn't see that one. Oh, yeah, champion of champions, absolute disaster. Yeah, no, I blow hot and cold, let's see what happens Alright, so we've got ten questions, I'm starting my clock

So here we go, question one Medieval Advent was a moveable feast which started how many Sundays before Christmas? Er, five Four Question two, what were mummers? Mummers performed plays, essentially. They did in York in particular. Question three, in the 1100s, King Henry II's jester, Roland,

performed which cheeky holiday tradition to amuse the court? He farted onto a fire. Is that right? One jump, one whistle, one fart. One bumbleum. Yes, I'll let you have that. Question four, what would medieval people have used for Christmas decorations? What we use now, so holly and so forth. Absolutely. Holly, ivy, mistletoe, etc. Question five.

In the medieval period, when could people expect to receive their festive gifts? At New Year's. It was. Question six. How could someone be appointed king of the bean? It was to do with if their slice of pie had the bean in it. Or they'd be queen of the pea. Question seven. If brawn was on the menu at medieval Christmas feast, what would you be eating? You would be eating delicious meat that had been made with some vinegar in it. Origin unknown

from which part of the animal it came from. Yeah, absolutely. Question eight. What was a boy bishop? A boy bishop was a boy that was inexplicably and inexcusably appointed to a majorly responsible role within the church as a form of torture. Sounds like Salisbury was a particularly bad gig. Question nine.

Name three of the feast days in the medieval festive period, apart from Christmas Day. In the medieval festive period, apart from Christmas Day. In the medieval... St Stephen's Day, St Nicholas' Day. Yep. Epiphany? Yeah, Epiphany, sure. Well done.

And this for nine out of ten. Known in Scotland as the Abbot of Unreason, what was the name of the person appointed to oversee rowdy, topsy-turvy Christmas fun? That is your friend and mine, the Lord of Bizzerell. Yay! Absolutely. Nine out of ten. Very strong score. Well done, Miles Johnson. Thank you. Gosh,

that was very nerve-wracking. You did very well. I mean, we've talked about a lot of stuff here. That's true. It's been fabulous. And listeners, if you want to learn more about the history of Christmas, then of course you can check out our Victorian Christmas episode with Dr Fern Riddell and Russell Kane. We've also got over 60 different episodes about different stuff from all over the world,

all of them available on BBC Sounds. And if you've enjoyed today's episode, then please make sure to leave us a review. Tell your friends, subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But all that's left for me to do is to say ho, ho, ho. Thanks very much to our lovely guests in History Corner, our Queen of the Pe the pea the holly

jolly dr eleanor janager thank you eleanor thank you so so much for having me and for putting up with as many george michael references as i put in there i enjoyed all of them and in comedy corner we've had the merry-making lord of misrule himself the wonderful miles jupp cheers miles thank you very much happy christmas everybody and to you listener, make sure to join us next time in Series 5. But for now, I'm off to go and bake 10,000 undercooked eel pies

and then throw them in the bin. Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Lloyd Roberts. The script was by Emma Neguse and me. The project manager was Saifah Mio

and the edit producer was Cornelius Mendez. Sideways is back for another season with stories of incredible feats of endurance. Mountain climbers, we plod onward through avalanches and snowstorms and occasional yetis. I'm Matthew Side, and in Sideways, you'll hear stories of bold thinkers and amazing lives. Stories of seeing the world differently.

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