The Folklore of Discworld

essential work must cease. And so the Twelve Days of Christmas were born.
    There are echoes of all this on the Disc. There are songs about what gifts one’s true love sends on the Twelve Days of Hogswatch, involving partridges and pear trees, and others about the rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Homes are decorated with special Hogswatch trees, not to mention holly, ivy, mistletoe. The mistletoe is felt, obscurely, to be especially significant, even in Unseen University, where there can be no question of anyone kissing anyone:
    ‘Well, er … it’s … well, it’s symbolic, Archchancellor.’
    ‘Ah?’
    The Senior Wrangler felt that something more was expected. He groped around in the dusty attics of his education.
    ‘Of … the leaves, d’y’see … they’re symbolic of … of green, d’y’see, whereas the berries, in fact, yes, the berries symbolize … symbolize white. Yes. White and green. Very … symbolic.’
    He waited. He was not, unfortunately, disappointed.
    ‘What of?’
    ‘I’m not sure that there has to be an of ,’ he said.
    ‘Ah? So,’ said the Archchancellor, thoughtfully, ‘it could be said that the white and green symbolize a small parasitic plant?’
    ‘Yes indeed,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
    ‘So mistletoe, in fact, symbolizes mistletoe?’
    ‘Exactly, Archchancellor,’ said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on.
    ‘Funny thing, that,’ said Ridcully, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. ‘That statement is either so deep that it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?’ [ Hogfather ]
    Not tosh, probably. Plants which insist on staying green, and even bearing white berries or red berries, when others are bare and dry are, in their own way, as unconquered as the midwinter sun. They are life, and they refuse to die.
    Unseen University observes another age-old custom at Hogswatch, the appointment of a Boy Archchancellor. A first-year student is selected to be the Archchancellor for a whole day, from dawn till dusk. During this period he can exert the full powers of that office, and there are many tales of japes played on senior members of the College Council. Yet inevitably, inexorably, dusk will come. For this reason the student selected for the honour is usually the most unpopular boy in the University, and his life expectancy the following day is brief.
    On Earth too there are traces of this urge to turn normal authority upside down during midwinter and New Year celebrations. At the Roman Saturnalia, as we have said, slaves feasted while masters acted as servants. In medieval France, low-ranking clergy sometimes took charge of the services in cathedrals on New Year’s Day or Twelfth Day and turned them into a Feast of Fools or Asses’ Feast. Their leader would call himself ‘bishop’ or ‘pope’ for the day. Theologians in Paris in 1445 complained that these clerical revellers came into church dressed up in ridiculous costumes and masks, pretending to be women and minstrels; they ran up and down the aisles, leaping and dancing; worse still, they sat round the altar eating black puddings, gambling, and singing wanton songs, and then went out into the streets to entertain the crowds with their foolery.
    There was another medieval ‘reversal ritual’ known in towns all over western Europe, but this one was absolutely respectable, well controlled, and full of charm – the custom of the Boy Bishop. Either on 6 December, the feast of St Nicholas (the patron saint of children), or on 28 December, the feast of the Holy Innocents (the babies Herod killed), the choirboys had a day off, and chose one of their number to be the Boy Bishop. He held office until Twelfth Night. Dressed in full episcopal robes, he could sit in the bishop’s throne and preside at certain services, while the rest of the boys also wore fine robes and sat in the chapter stalls; the real bishop (if present) and the other higher clergy had to go and sit in the choir-stalls. The custom was especially popular in England, where it spread to abbeys, some Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and many wealthy parish churches. Henry VIII forbade it, but it survived (or was revived) in some places. It is still done in Hereford Cathedral, where the Boy Bishop preaches a sermon on St Nicholas’s Day.
    Meanwhile, out in the countryside, people have their own little ways, as Albert explains when Death