The Folklore of Discworld

turn up on various dates from November through to Twelfth Night. One of the first to arrive is St Martin (11 November), who comes to Antwerp, Ypres, and other Flemish towns. He wears a red cloak, and rides a white horse. Children hang up stockings stuffed with hay in their bedrooms; by morning the hay has disappeared, replaced by apples,nuts, and little cakes shaped like horseshoes. That’s assuming the children have been good , naturally; if they haven’t, all they find is a cane to beat them.
    Then there is St Nicholas, patron saint of children, who brings them gifts either on the eve of his own feast day (6 December) or on Christmas Eve. He is famous in Holland and Belgium, and in the Catholic parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. He comes in the night riding a white horse (or donkey); he is dressed as a bishop in red robes embroidered with gold, and has a fine white beard. Children put out hay and carrots for his steed, and a glass of schnapps for his servant who carries the bag of presents, whose name is Scruffy Johnny, or Black Peter. Often there is someone else with them – the hideous Krampus or Klaubauf, a shaggy monster with horns, black face, fiery eyes, and chains that clank as he moves. Children who know their catechism will be rewarded with sweets; those who don’t had better look out, for Krampus and Black Peter both carry a stick to beat them.
    The Protestant parts of Germany disapproved of saints, so St Nicholas is not mentioned there. Instead, it is the Christ Child, imagined as a radiantly lovely little boy, who comes at midnight on Christmas Eve to bless the good children and leave presents for them. However, it wouldn’t do for things to be all sweetness and light. So in north Germany there is also Knecht Ruprecht, a weird figure dressed in skins or straw; if children have been good and can sing a hymn nicely, he rewards them with apples and gingerbread from his wallet, but if they can’t he beats them with a bag of soot and ashes. In some parts people call him Rough Klas or Ashy Klas; since ‘Klas’ is short for ‘Nicholas’, they must think he is an avatar of the saint.
    Nowadays, the mood has changed. It is not now thought to be good for little children to be scared out of their wits, even if it does make them behave themselves. So in the course of the twentieth century some of the worst bogey-figures have reinvented themselves as comic and kindly. Take the Icelandic Gryla, for example, who has been around for some seven hundred years. She is a huge uglyshe-troll with fifteen tails, carrying a sheepskin sack and accompanied by her thirteen sons, the Christmas Lads, who are smaller but equally ugly. Until fairly recently, the whole point about Gryla was that she was hunting for naughty children, to carry them off in that sack, and eat them; a fine old tradition with the smack of authenticity. Now she brings sweets and goodies in the sack, and the thirteen Lads slip into a child’s room, one by one, during the thirteen nights before Christmas, to pop something nice under the pillow … They still look like goblins, though.
    The best-known of all the gift-bringers on Earth, and most like the Hogfather, is the one whom some call Father Christmas and others Santa Claus and others Le Père Noël. He has been around for over 600 years, and is now stronger than ever. The myth just grows and grows and grows, since it is powered by money.
    When first glimpsed, in England at the end of the Middle Ages, he had nothing to do with children, and little to do with gifts. He wasn’t even necessarily called Father Christmas, but could be ‘Captain Christmas’, ‘Prince Christmas’, or ‘Sir Christmas’. His job was to personify all the joys of eating, drinking and general jollity. In the 1460s the rector of Plymtree in Devonshire wrote a lively carol about Sir Christmas singing ‘Nowell, Nowell!’ outside the door, and urging everybody to drink as much as possible:
    Buvez bien par toute la compagnie,
    Make good cheer and be right merry!
    He was still at it in the early seventeenth century (in spite of Puritan disapproval), when he was featured in Ben Jonson’s play Christmas his Masque (1616), coming on stage followed by his equally jolly sons, whose names were Misrule, Carol, Mince Pie, Pots-and-Pan, New Year Gift, Mumming, Wassail, and Baby Cake. He wore doublet and hose and a high-crowned hat with a brooch, and had a long thin beard.
    It was Charles Dickens who gave the finest