The customs behind the season, from Henry V’s court to the wassail bowl
The Yuletide Medieval Festival is set in England in 1420, in the last years of King Henry V’s reign. These guides explain the Christmas traditions of that world: where they came from, what we actually know about them, and which popular stories historians doubt.
Henry V spent Christmas 1420 in Paris, lodged at the Louvre with his new queen, Catherine of Valois, and Christmas 1421 in camp at the siege of Meaux. Between the two, his only son was born at Windsor on St. Nicholas Day.
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St. Nicholas Day, December 6, honors a bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey about whom almost nothing is certain. His legends of secret generosity inspired centuries of gift-giving, England's medieval boy bishops, and eventually Santa Claus.
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Krampus is the horned, chain-rattling companion of St. Nicholas in Alpine folklore, out on the night of December 5. His roots lie in medieval Nicholas plays and Alpine custom; the popular claim that he is an ancient pagan god is disputed.
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Yule was an old Germanic name for the midwinter season, recorded in England by the 720s, that later became simply another word for Christmas. Much of what is popularly said about "pagan Yule" rests on far thinner evidence than its confident retellings suggest.
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A great medieval Christmas dinner followed weeks of Advent fasting and arrived in courses of many dishes at once, led by the boar's head and finished with sculpted showpieces called subtleties. Most of the menu was about display as much as appetite.
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At an English feast in the 15th century, diners were seated by rank, had water poured over their hands, ate from bread trenchers with a knife, a spoon and their fingers, and shared dishes in small groups called messes. The courtesy books of the period show that the rules were detailed and that clean hands mattered.
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Pottage, anything cooked in a pot with liquid, was the everyday dish of medieval England at every level of society. A villager's pot held cabbage, leeks and a little beef or mutton; a royal cook's version added saffron, spice powders and marrow bones. Cookery books of the period record dozens of named pottages, some thin enough to pour and some thick enough to stand.
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Medieval England did eat salad. The Forme of Cury, compiled about 1390 by Richard II's master cooks, gives a recipe called Salat: fourteen herbs and alliums torn small by hand and dressed with raw oil, vinegar and salt. Household manuals of the next century still warned that raw greens were hard on the stomach.
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The prized roast bird of a well-off medieval table was the capon, with hens and chickens beside it. Cookery books from the decades around 1420 stuff them with parsley, suet, egg yolks, spices and grapes, roast them on a spit, and send them out with sharp sauces of verjuice, ginger and almonds.
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In late medieval England the pig was killed in late autumn, around Martinmas on November 11, and much of the meat was salted or soused to keep through the winter. The most prized of it, brawn served with mustard, was a standard dish of the first course at great dinners, above all in the Christmas season.
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The 14th-century English recipe "For to make Tartys in Applis" comes from a cookery manuscript dated 1381 and mixes apples with pears, figs, raisins, spices and saffron in a pastry case called a coffin. A grand meal of the period ended not with a pudding but with wafers, spiced wine and a last course known as the void.
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Around 1420 the everyday English drink was ale, brewed without hops and sold fresh, often by women known as alewives. Hopped beer was a recent arrival from the Low Countries, and wine, mostly shipped from English-ruled Gascony, was the drink of those who could afford it.
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Wassail began as a toast meaning "be in good health," was first recorded as a drinking salute in the 12th century, and by about 1300 also named the spiced drink itself. Wassailing door to door and in the orchards is well documented by the 17th century.
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The Twelve Days of Christmas begin on December 25 and run to Twelfth Night and Epiphany in early January. In medieval England they were the longest holiday of the year, packed with feast days, while the famous song and its 'secret code' story came much later.
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The Lord of Misrule was a mock ruler appointed to run the Christmas games in English royal and noble households, colleges and the Inns of Court. His best-documented reigns are Tudor, well after 1420, and his links to Roman Saturnalia are a parallel rather than a proven pedigree.
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Medieval "mumming" meant costumed, masked visitors and, by the 1420s, scripted court entertainments such as John Lydgate's for the young Henry VI. The familiar folk Mummers' play, with St. George, a Turkish Knight and a quack Doctor, is a much later tradition first recorded in the second half of the 18th century.
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