Sarah Clegg on spooky Christmas traditions
The day I am due to interview author Sarah Clegg, I am in a wet and foggy Vilnius. As I walk along a busy shopping street, I see a busking Father Christmas playing Last Christmas on a trumpet, and though I can’t help but feel that, with over five weeks to the big day, he’s started a little early, it feels very apt as Sarah’s new book, The Dead of Winter, is an examination of lesser-known Christmas traditions and the monsters at the heart of them.
The Dead of Winter is a book that was born to be read at Christmas, curled up on a sofa above a sea of wrapping paper. Sarah is an expert guide through worlds old and new, navigating everything from a Krampus Run in Salzburg to a Mummers Play in Marshfield, which she genuinely had to pay a driver to take her to last Boxing Day.
Her narration is so warm and genial that you can feel the glimmer of joy in her eyes as she picks apart folkloric errors in Netflix Christmas movies. It’s a book to devour and one you feel smarter for having read.
It was a complete pleasure to speak to her and learn more about the book that should be at the top of your Christmas list.
What was your relationship with Christmas like before you started writing The Dead of Winter?
I absolutely adore Christmas. The tree goes up on the first of December, and that’s only because my husband has put his foot down on it going up in November. The house is full of Christmas decorations, I have Christmas mugs and a go-to mulled wine recipe.
What made you decide to write the book?
When I was researching my first book, Women’s Lore, which is about child-stealing, seductive demonesses, I was looking into child-stealing witches with iron body parts (which is very much a sub-category of monsters) and ran into Perchta, a monstrous witch with an iron-nose who goes house to house every Christmas brutally murdering children who haven’t done their chores and leading a vast parade of the dead.
She felt so joyously monstrous that her connection with Christmas felt jarring, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that there were quite a lot of Christmas monsters, like Krampus and Grýla, the ogress from Iceland. I wanted to understand why we have so many Christmas monsters, where they came from and why they look the way they do.
Somewhere deep within it all, I just really wanted to go to a Krampus Run. My pitch to my agent was basically, “I will be going to a Krampus Run.”
I really wanted to take part in all this joyous, horrible nonsense.
Make your art work for you, not the other way around.
Absolutely!
Has your relationship to Christmas changed having written the book?
I want to say that it has, but I’m not sure. I've always loved the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas1 and the books Box of Delights and The Dark is Rising, which are children’s stories set at Christmas that have these dark, murderous, pagan undertones.
If I’m going to be really honest, the main thing that has changed is that now I know Krampus Runs are just as fun as I thought they were.
What are your Christmas traditions?
The tree always goes up as close to December 1st as we can manage2, and we also do a big book shop for our nieces and nephews.
My brother and I exchange the ugliest Christmas decorations we can find - I have a pug in a tutu, and he has a raw turkey covered in glitter. This sounds like an archaic ritual, but the decorations can’t be given as a gift - you can’t wrap them and give them to the other, so you have to sneak them into other things, like a bag of cheeses. It’s gotten quite complex.
In your book, you mention that you read a Victorian ghost story every Christmas. What are your favourites?
I love the classics. MR James really has something, and maybe this is because I have a background in academia, but so many of his ghost stories, which are set in this world and would be read by James to his colleagues on Christmas Eve, have this real academic feel and a homely familiarity.
I really like Algernon Blackwood. The Willows is absolutely fantastic - I’ve got to read it all in one sitting; the build of discomfort and horror is so well done.
You start The Dead of Winter with an Årsgång, a divination ritual from Sweden - are there any traditions you researched that you will now incorporate into your Christmases?
I’ll be trying to incorporate Krampus Runs. I’m going to the Whitby Krampus Run this year, though it’s harder to get to than Salzburg. I’ll try and go to another Wassail because they happen in January, so everything’s a bit more chill and it's really nice to have stuff that still has the cosy horror element to it after Christmas is done.
In the book, you quote Jerome K. Jerome, who says that Christmas, ‘Is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.’ Do you think there’s a natural morbidity to Christmas, or is it more of a desire for contrast?
I think it’s really noticeable that it’s not just ghosts at Christmas, but also murders. We have Christmas-themed murder mysteries, there will usually be a new Agatha Christie adaptation broadcast then, and murder stories set at Christmas sell really well. If you look at what Waterstones are pushing as Christmas gifts, some of the books have ghosts in them, but a lot of them are murder mysteries.
I think there is a sense of contrast, but some part of it is cosy. That we have a subgenre of crime called cosy crime is reallytelling. Reading about monsters does help you feel cosy - murder mysteries and ghost stories are partly about a restoration of peace.
I do think there is also an element of people liking to scare themselves, and that’s easier to accomplish when it’s dark. Christmas is the darkest point of the year, why wouldn’t we push it to see how far we can go?
In the book, you mention we’re currently in a Christmas monster boom. As we enter increasingly uncertain times,do you think the monsters will sustain themselves?
Christmas monsters had a real downturn in the Victorian period, but other than that, we’ve had them for 1500 years. They have been through a lot of downtimes and have been fine.
Coming back to this idea of restoration, when people face scary things, it can be really helpful to create monsters that they can control - that tends to be what demons are. For my first book, I was looking at demons of childbirth and infant death, which were a kind of consolation. In the pre-modern world before medicine, women had little control over how their pregnancy or labour would go, but if they could make some amulets and say a few prayers and incantations, then they could feel like they were doing something and give themselves some feeling of control.
I do think monsters are great for comfort. They can be a representation of your fears, but one that can be contained.
Your narrative voice is so personable, and I found the book's denouement really moving. What did you learn about yourself while writing it?
The ending of the book was very personal. There is this way that Christmas allows me to reach out to the family members I’ve lost, that it is a time that I will just sit and remember them. I will feel their absence, but in their absence, also feel their presence.
If I’m honest, I hadn’t fully noticed how much I did that until I started thinking about that for the book, and I didn’t fully notice how much I loved Christmas for giving me the space to miss people in a way that was joyous, rather than just bleak and sad.
For work
The Notes app
It’s the best. I wish I was the type of person with a beautiful notebook and fountain pen, but whenever I have an idea, it goes straight into the notes app.
Access to the online Loeb Classical Library
You can just search words, and it will pull everything that they have published with that word! It’s absolutely phenomenal.
Video game livestreams
I love writing, but when I’m finding it difficult to get into the mood, then I watch video game livestreams. I think they’re perfect - you stick them on the TV on YouTube, have your laptop on your lap, and find that twenty to thirty minutes in, I have started typing.
For pleasure
Seasonal Crockery
We’ve got Halloween plates, Christmas plates, Winter but not Christmas plates, Summer plates and mugs. We’ve got decorations for all the holidays too. I kind of resent Summer because there are no holidays and tie-in decorations. I have a fireworks mug from Emma Bridgewater that I love because it means I have a mug for the transition between Halloween and Christmas.
A Kindle
I got a Kindle two weeks ago and it's great. Obviously, it’s not replacing actual books, but I went on a trip to the US, and suddenly half my luggage wasn’t taken up by books.
My husband, Max.
It’s sappy, but I really like him. It’s kind of relevant because The Dead of Winter is dedicated to him, but he is also perfect. I’ll say him and hope that it makes up for half the house being full of seasonal crockery.
The Dead of Winter and Women’s Lore are available to buy now from Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookstores. You can follow Sarah on Instagram @readingartefacts.
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Sarah did qualify this statement by dismissing certain endeavours, but they will remain the subject of interviewer/interviewee confidentiality.
Sarah opts for a fresh tree as big as she and her husband can feasibly fit into their house, even if it means chopping it down in the living room in the New Year to get it back out.