Product Description

Medieval Christmas - roaring fires, Yule logs, boar's head on a platter and carols. So many of our best-loved Christmas traditions have their origins in the medieval period that it would be impossible to imagine the Christmas season without holly and ivy in some form, carol singers calling from door to door and a general sense of celebration in the face of winter's harshest moments. Sophie Jackson investigates the roots of the Christmas feast in this beautifully illustrated book, which also offers guidance on how to recreate elements of the medieval Christmas in your own home, with tips on decorations, instructions for playing medieval games and recipes for seasonal dishes. She unearths some fascinating information on some of our most cherished customs as well as some which have fallen by the wayside. (Modern children will be relieved that the medieval custom of administering a ritual beating to children on 28 December, the feast of the Holy Innocents, has now given way to more child-friendly practices.) The book recreates the medieval Christmas, showing how all classes of society celebrated the feast in their own way and in doing so evolved a tradition that still delights us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81444 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

About the Author
Sophie Jackson is an expert on medieval games and a regular contributor to 'The Medieaval History Magazine' She lives in Suffolk.

Customer Reviews

Helps you to celebrate a traditional Christmas today.
I had the privilege of viewing this book before making the decision on whether to purchase it. The first thing that struck me was the warm-look of the cover which in itself made me want to look inside the book. These days we take so much for granted that we never ask "why do we do that?" This author has obviously carried considerable research and come up with countless nuggets of information that give us the background to a traditional Christmas which started in medieval times. Learn about the origins of Holly and Ivy and what food they ate back then. There are many surprises in this book and it holds your interest from page 1.
Sophie has included recipes so for those adventuresome types they can try and re-create Christmas in culinary respects.
Personally, I do not always look backwards and say the old times were better than now, but I do believe we have so little ritual in our lives that in many respects living in today's society we have lost our meaning.
This book will help you to celebrate Christmas for your family with pleasure and that might well include switching off the TV to play traditional games.
All in all, I can thoroughly recommend this book. You can place it on the coffee table and delve into a chapter at a time. It is so attractive that guests are almost bound to pick it up and find something of interest.
A lovely and interesting book to own

The Real Spirit of Christmas in a book!
I read a previous book by this author (The Curse of Dasenin) which I really liked. I was surprised to see she also wrote non-fiction, but I bought the book to see what it was like. After reading it I decided that in future all my Christmasses are going to be Medieval ones, as, according to this book, they had an awful lot more fun and in tune with the real spirit of Christmas it was more about good companionship and good food than the plastic, materialistic festival we have these days.