Christmas Curiosities ('Tis the season to be reading)

This year, I started on Facebook the tradition I had already started on this blog of sharing a book for the Christmas season (or for other seasons at other times of the year). It has been so far quite successful, so I thought I'd keep it alive on the blog as well. I know I already mentioned Christmas Curiosities, but I thought I would plug it again as it was four years ago. So this was a present from my brother PJ which is now among my early Yuletide reads. It is about the darker side of Christmas in its iconography: you have plenty of images of Krampus, creepy Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas who carries a rod to beat naughty children, dead birds (!) on season's greetings' cards, elves, devils, the Christm Child advertising cigars (!), winter spirits, etc. Because one should always remember Christmas' more sinister overtone, its part of darkness which makes us enjoy its lights all the more, I recommend that you read it.

The darker side of Christmas

Because there is a darker, ghoulish, creepy side to Christmas. Among the many books I am reading at the moment, I have this one, Christmas Curiosities, last year's Christmas present from my brother. We often forget that Christmas in many ways was a "dark" holiday, that was much closer to my beloved Halloween. Pagan beliefs and traditions are still deeply rooted in it , and with it supernatural, monsters, ghosts, etc. Most of Western Christmas imagery is rooted in Nordic legends. In Victorian times, Christmas was the season of ghost stories (A Christmas Carol belongs to this tradition). In Québec, we have the legend of the Chasse-Galerie, a cautionary Christmas tale that has very sinister tones.

But even the genuinely Christian side of Christmas is not devoid of a sinister tradition: who does not shiver thinking about the Massacre of the Innocents? And there is also The Legend of Saint Nicholas, which I blogged about before and which I might rewrite here, the same way I did with The Legend of Jack O'Lantern.  The legend of the evil butcher was maybe at the origin of the Père Fouettard, Krampus and other sinister Christmas bogeymen. So I am reading this book with fascination. I love to go back to the primitive roots of Christmas, to its darkness that makes us appreciate its lights even more.