The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures

by Sarah Clegg

in the mid-twelfth century, the Feast of Fools was established. This new celebration seems to have started in France, and stemmed from a 1 January feast day, the Feast of Circumcision (celebrating the circumcision of Christ eight days following his birth), which had also become the day that the subdeacons – the lowest of the clerical orders – were honoured. It might well have begun in a fairly calm manner, but being on the same date as Kalends and celebrating the most junior clerics was a recipe for turning social hierarchies on their head and it wasn’t long before it was all getting a bit out of hand. Despite being a part of the liturgy, despite being celebrated by members of the church, the church itself was soon complaining about it vehemently. Around fifty years after the Feast of Fools is first attested, the Pope himself was up in arms against its ‘scandalous stupidities’ and ‘obscene revellings’.11 And yet, the people loved it, just as they did Kalends, and despite irritating the Pope himself, it continued to be celebrated – and to spread. By the early thirteenth century, bishops in England were complaining about it as well, furious at the misbehaviour they were witnessing.xi By the fifteenth century, things were somehow even more anarchic. A letter written by the faculty of theology in the University of Paris to the prelates of France is so full of grumpiness about the nonsense that attended the feast that it’s a joy to read. According to the faculty letter, the pri...