Merry Spooky Christmas!

The chilling history of the "Coventry Carol," the Wild Hunt and the eerie Christmas classic "The Snowman," plus Santa's penchant for magic mushrooms.

My favorite Christmas carol is the “Coventry Carol,” which is not so much about Christmas as it is the mass murder of babies. It tells the Biblical story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, which is when King Herod, upon hearing that a new king was born in Bethlehem, decided to murder every child under the age of 2 in the city to prevent this new king from ever arising to take his throne.

The story probably never happened: Herod was, by all accounts, a complete and utter dick, but the event is only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, and literally nowhere else. What is likely is that, because of harsh government policies, Jews like Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to become refugees, fleeing Bethlehem to Egypt to escape persecution from Herod’s rule. “Herod murdered all the children because he was scared of Jesus’s power” makes for a fantastic story, though, so it was inevitable that Nativity plays would seize on the dramatic story to bring some emotional clout to the tale.

What makes it my favorite Christmas Carol, though, is what happened in 1940: The City of Coventry was brutally bombed by Hitler’s Luftwaffe in November of that year because of the city’s industrial role in the building of munitions and airplane engines. The Coventry Cathedral, a beautiful gothic 14th century building, was hit in the bombing, leaving only a hollowed out shell of a church which has been left standing to this very day in Coventry.

6 weeks later, on Christmas Day, the Cathedral’s provost assembled as many members of the Cathedral Choir as he could still find, and stood them all in the ruins of the bombed-out church to sing the “Coventry Carol,” this tale of the massacre of the innocents at the hand of a tyrant. You can hear a brief clip of it in the first few minutes of this fantastic show from the BBC.

For my money, Christmas is a far spookier holiday than Halloween.

The Wild Hunt

Let this also serve as your annual reminder of the Wild Hunt. The myth of Santa Claus is said to be partly influenced by this Northern European mythical trope, in which a ghostly horde of riders, usually headed by Odin, chases down some unseen, otherworldly quarry. It was said if you saw or heard the Wild Hunt, it meant war, famine, or some other catastrophe was coming. It could also mean that the riders might kidnap you into their horde, and carry you forever back to the land of the fairies or the underworld.

This myth also made for one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs, and I think — though I’m going out on a limb here — it also seems to be the basis of the eeriest Christmas special, Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, in which a boy’s brought-to-life snowman takes him on a soaring flight over the North Atlantic to the North Pole.

Santa’s Little Helper

Finally: Last year on Christmas, I wrote about the possibility that part of the Santa Claus myth is inspired by Scandinavian shamans who would enter people’s snowed-in homes through their chimneys dressed up in red caps to imitate the psychedelic amanita muscaria mushrooms that they imbibed to give families visions of their future. The mushrooms were toxic for humans, but the shamans had learned that if you fed them to the reindeer that pulled their sleighs across the snowed out tundras, then the reindeer’s urine would retain the psychoactive elements without the potentially deadly toxins.

May whatever holiday you celebrate be full of joy, fun, and spookiness this year. And remember — do not make efforts to see Santa Claus. He may take you with him back to the land of the fairies.