Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by simonefk
The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures by Sarah Clegg
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.5
The Dark of Winter is an informative yet easy to read historical book about the dark folklore surrounding Christmas including Krampus, Belsnickel, Christmas witches, Lords of Misrule, guising and wassailing. It's focus is on Western Europe - namely Austria, Germany, Finland and Italy. Part travel writing as the author attended many dark Christmas events and part history.
I found it fascinating, really well written, bringing a dark magic to Christmas. I think the author is fantastic at analyzing the historian's theories and warning against believing all theories at face value. She discusses where these fascinating stories, events and practices might emerge which evidently is not a simple task. She also addresses the broader social changes that lead to the popularity of these stories and practices dwindling then re-energing.
My only critique is that some basic coverage of time periods may have been helpful for the historical challenged like myself as I'm not familiar with terms like antiquity, the Bronze age and years AD, CE. This is more a me problem than an author problem.
The Dark of Winter inspired me to explore events in my local area and I'm actually hoping to go wassailing in a couple weeks!
I found it fascinating, really well written, bringing a dark magic to Christmas. I think the author is fantastic at analyzing the historian's theories and warning against believing all theories at face value. She discusses where these fascinating stories, events and practices might emerge which evidently is not a simple task. She also addresses the broader social changes that lead to the popularity of these stories and practices dwindling then re-energing.
My only critique is that some basic coverage of time periods may have been helpful for the historical challenged like myself as I'm not familiar with terms like antiquity, the Bronze age and years AD, CE. This is more a me problem than an author problem.
The Dark of Winter inspired me to explore events in my local area and I'm actually hoping to go wassailing in a couple weeks!