SSoP Podcast Episode 75 — Christmas: May Your Heart Be Light

This is a transcription of Christmas: May Your Heart Be Light

David: Hello. Welcome to Strong Sense of Place.

Melissa: In each episode, we focus on one destination and discuss what makes it different than any other place on Earth.

David: Then we recommend five books we love that took us there on the page.

Melissa: I’m Melissa Joulwan.

David: I’m David Humphreys.

David: We’re going around the world one great read at a time. Thanks for joining us.

[cheerful music]

David: Welcome to Strong Sense of Place. Today we get curious about Christmas. Today in Two Truths and a Lie, we’ll talk about the dark origins of one of our favorite Christmas carols – as well as the terrifying creatures that are running around in Iceland this time of year. Then we’ll talk about five books we love.

Melissa: I’m recommending a completely over-the-top Christmas murder mystery that is so ridiculous, it goes all the way around to awesome.

David: If you’ve ever wanted your Christmas to include a golden pig, a candy-pooping log, and a witch on a broomstick, I have the perfect book for you. But first, Mel’s going to bring us up to speed with the Christmas 101.

Melissa: Everyone might not know this about us, but we go all-in on Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving, we make a schedule for Christmas movies we’ll watch. We negotiate which cookies we’re going to bake. We always make Russian Teacakes — my favorite — and chocolate chip. Your favorite. And we usually add one more. This year it’s shortbread. Then we sprinkle fun stuff into the month. Decorating the tree, Christmas board games, hot chocolate in our favorite park. We have a pretend office Christmas party where we take ourselves out to lunch and watch the ridiculous movie ‘Office Christmas Party.’ Then on Christmas Eve, we have Jolabokaflod. Then on Christmas Day, we take a walk to have a beer and potato chips in a beer garden on top of a hill overlooking Prague.

Melissa: I also read Christmas books all month long. Mostly golden-age-style crime and Christmas horror. Sometimes I throw rom-coms in there. And I always read ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens. And every year, I’m surprised when I remember that you’ve never read it.

Melissa: For my 101 today, I thought I’d talk about how and why ‘A Christmas Carol’ came to be — and then I’m going to make my case for why I think everyone should read it during December.

Melissa: Before we get into this particular ghost story, let’s talk about why Dickens wrote a ghost story for Christmas at all.

Melissa: The Victorians, bless their hearts, made a death a little bit of a hobby. Mortality rates in the 19th century were high, and instead of shying away from death, the Victorians leaned in. They made mourning jewelry from the hair of the deceased. Posed with the recently passed for photos, held séance parties, and piknicked in the graveyard.

Melissa: At the end of the year, when the dark seeped into much of the day, they told ghost stories. They believed that at the edge of the year, around the time of the Winter Solstice, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was just a bit thinner.

Melissa: The Victorians were honoring an old belief that during December’s dark days, the spirits could get rowdy and mischievous. On Christmas Eve, especially, they had free reign to play before restraining themselves on the holy day of December 25.

Melissa: Dickens wrote a handful of Christmas stories and essays, but it was Ebenezer Scrooge and his four iconic ghosts that accidentally created so much of what we associate with Christmas. Before the that first visit from ol’ Jacob Marley in 1863, Christmas in Victorian England had lost some of its sparkle.

Melissa: Let’s travel with the ghost of Christmas Past to 1642. That’s the year the English Civil War started. The Parliament was made up of Puritans, and no one more puritanical and anti-fun than Olive Cromwell, Lord and Protector of England — and known curmudgeon. He believed traditional, rowdy Christmas celebrations were an exercise in sinful excess and tried to put the kibosh on merrymaking.

Melissa: It mostly worked. By the Victorian era, Christmas was dangerously close to being just another day. The Industrial Revolution meant fewer days off in general. Christmas was considered so inconsequential, hardly anyone complained that December 25th was just another work day.

Melissa: By the 1840s, London was crowded, dirty, and harsh — especially if you were poor. This was the world of Dickens’ childhood. He was born into a middle-class family, but his father was bad with money. By 1824, when Charles was 12, his father was sent to a debtors’ prison. Little Charles had to leave school, pawn his books, and take a job at a rat-infested factory that made shoe polish.

Melissa: Fast forward almost 20 years. Dickens is now a literary sensation. In fall 1843, he toured tin mines in Cornwall and was incensed by the children working in horrific conditions. At a fundraising speech for the Manchester Athenaeum, Dickens urged workers and employers to work together to improve education and ease the suffering of the poor. He had it in his head to write a protest pamphlet, but decided that a story might be more effective.

Melissa: It’s also worth mentioning that Dickens was in desperate need of cash. His book ‘The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit’ was selling so poorly, his publishers were threatening to decrease his salary. He had a fifth child on the way, and plenty of debut, plus he was trying to support his father.

Melissa: In October 1843, he started writing ‘A Christmas Carol.’ He cranked it out in six weeks. His biographer Michael Slater said it was ‘written at white heat.’ In reality, it was written in his head during long walks around London in the dark, sometimes 15 to 20 miles per night.

Melissa: Dickens poured all of his feelings about social justices, the plight of the poor, and the painful memories of his own childhood into the story. He said that he alternately laughed and cried as he wrote the book.

Melissa: ‘A Christmas Carol’ was published on December 19, 1843. Just in time for Christmas. Dickens’ relationship with his publisher was still on the rocks, so he paid to print the book himself. The book was pretty glam: It was bound in red cloth with gilt-edged pages and hand-colored illustrations, including Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball and the jolly Ghost of Christmas Present.

Melissa: ‘A Christmas Carol’ — 6000 copies — sold out by Christmas Eve. By the end of the following year, eleven more editions had been released, and it’s never been out of print since. In 1853, Dickens gave a reading of the book in Birmingham Town Hall, and that started his tradition of reading the story to audiences in Great Britain and the United States.

Melissa: He performed his book 127 times, reading from a special performance script of the book he created with scissors and glue. This prompt copy of the book is how part of the collection at the New York Public Library. You can see the pages online at the Morgan Library website and you can buy a reproduction copy, too.

Melissa: Within six weeks of its publication, ‘A Christmas Carol’ was adapted for the stage. There are hundreds of stage versions, including musicals, two ballets, and four operas. IMDB lists more than 100 versions of the story, including a video game.

Melissa: Our favorite is the 1970 musical version called ‘Scrooge,’ starring Albert Finney. He’s great, but for me, the real star is Anthony Rodgers who plays Tom Jenkins. He’s not even in the book! But he sings the song ‘Thank You Very Much’ and brings the house down. The song is a celebration of Scrooge’s death complete with high kicks, hats thrown in the air, and tap dancing on Scrooge’s coffin. It’s the best.

Melissa: So, yes. One hundred percent, watch your favorite film adaptation. But also: Please treat yourself to the original novella.

Melissa: Here are five reasons why your Christmas will be 1843% merrier if you read ‘A Christmas Carol:’

Melissa: Number one. A Christmas Carol has all the beloved hallmarks of Charles Dickens’ writing. Character names that are fitting and fun to say? Check. We’ve got Ol’ Fezziwig, Cratchitt, Scrooge, Marley, Tiny Tim… they’re snappy and feel good in your mouth. And then, just to switch it up: Fred. Fezziwig, Cratchitt, and… Fred. There’s also a very voice-y narrator. The wry, comic tone balances out the heavier themes of the book. And you know that from the first sentence:

‘Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.’

Melissa: Then in the second paragraph, we get a mediation on the doornail:

‘Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Melissa: Number two. You’ve seen Scrooge on the screen, but he is so perfectly terrible on the page. This is how Dickens introduces Scrooge to us:

‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster… He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.’

Melissa: Reason number three. It has a very strong sense of place and time. Dickens is famous — or notorious, depending on your perspective — for his detailed descriptions. In this book, he pours on the Christmas atmosphere. Even after reading this book for 40+ years, I’m still enthralled by the descriptions of the shop windows and the hubbub on the streets.

Melissa: Reason number four to read ‘A Christmas Carol’: It’s excellent to read out loud. Dicken’s words are almost like sound effect, lots of hard consonants and alliteration:

• Bah, humbug!
• Chirrup
• Yo-ho
• Hilli-ho
• pudding
• custard

Melissa: And especially Scrooge, you can have so much fun with Scrooge. Plus, the way the narrator breaks the fourth wall, it’s easy to interact with your listeners.

Melissa: And finally, reason number five: It’s short. Forget doorstopper novels like ‘Bleak House’ — 900+ pages — and ‘Oliver Twist’ — 600ish pages… ‘A Christmas Carol’ is just about 100 pages. It’s filled with suspense, frights, laughs, and goodwill toward men. It takes about three hours to read — that’s only about an hour longer than watching a move version — and it’s merry and bright time with old Mr. Scrooge.

Melissa: That’s the Christmas 101.

David: God bless us, every one.

David: I’m about to say three statements. Two are true. Mel doesn’t know which is the lie. - Statement one: Judy Garland thought the original lyrics to ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ were too grim to sing. Statement two: Modern Icelandic parents tell their children a story about a fox that comes around on December 24th and steals the Wi-Fi from houses where people have ignored their grandparents all year. And statement three: A Canadian airline once secretly bought Christmas presents for an entire planeload of passengers while they were in the air and delivered them on the baggage carousel.

Melissa: I’m going to say one is true.

David: It is true. So, let’s go back to 1944 and a very Christmassy MGM soundstage. ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ is a musical about a family living in St. Louis in the year leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair. It’s based on a series of short stories by Sally Benson that originally ran in The New Yorker. Judy Garland stars — you might know ‘The Trolley Song’ from that show.

David: Near the end of the film, the family has decided they’re moving to New York City. Everyone’s anxious about it, especially the kids. On Christmas Eve, Judy Garland’s character is to comfort her little sister, who is devastated about leaving their home, the only home they’ve ever known. The little sister was played by Margaret O’Brien, who was seven at the time. The filmmakers wanted a new song for that moment; songwriters sat down, and wrote, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’

David: The problem was the lyrics. Songwriter Hugh Martin’s first draft was… a bit dark. It had lines like: ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last.’ and ‘Faithful friends who were dear to us / will be near to us no more.’ Garland took one look and said: yeah, no. According to biographer John Fricke, she told Martin, ‘I can’t sing that. The audience will think I’m a monster singing that to a little girl.’

David: So Martin went back to the piano and softened everything. ‘It may be your last’ became ‘Let your heart be light.’ He kept the line ‘Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow,’ which gave the song that bittersweet, wartime ache. And that’s the version she sings in the film: gentle and a little melancholy.

David: The movie did really well. Meet Me in St. Louis was the second-biggest box-office hit of 1944, behind Going My Way with Bing Crosby, which is also a Christmas movie. ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ is also famous for introducing Judy Garland to the director, Vincente Minnelli. They went on to make more films together, but their biggest collaboration was Liza Minnelli.

David: The song itself didn’t truly become a Christmas standard until the late ’50s, when Frank Sinatra decided he wanted it for his album A Jolly Christmas. The story goes that he called Hugh Martin and said, ‘The name of my album is Jolly Christmas. Do you think you could jolly up that line about muddling through?’ Martin rewrote it as: ‘Hang a shining star upon the highest bough. So the next time you hear it in a grocery store, just remember: that soothing little lullaby used to threaten to make this Christmas your last.

Melissa: I think the second one is false.

David: That is not true. I made that up.

David: But Iceland does have an assortment of Christmas characters that I wanted to tell you about—and they are much weirder than my Wi-Fi fox.

David: At the top of the Yule food chain is an ogress. There’s also a giant black cat. And there are thirteen Santa-adjacent troublemakers who come down from the mountains one by one on December nights.

David: et’s start with the ogress. Her name is Grýla, and my apologies to any Icelanders listening. Grýla lives in a cave in the mountains, and she likes to eat badly behaved kids. In older tales, she roams the countryside with a sack, collecting naughty children to cook into a stew. She has a husband. I’m going to politely pass on attempting his name. And they have a cat; of course they do.

David: Jólakötturinn, the Yule Cat, is a huge, lurking black cat that prowls the snowy fields around Christmas. The legend goes that it will eat anyone who hasn’t received at least one new piece of clothing before Christmas Eve.

David: For poor farm families, that turned into a work incentive: everybody rushed to finish the spinning and weaving so their loved ones could have a new scarf or a pair of socks… and not get devoured by a giant supernatural beast.

David: And then there are the 13 Yule Lads. Traditionally, they were pretty sinister: pranksters and sometimes child-stealers, with names that describe their shtick—Door-Slammer, Sausage-Swiper, Spoon-Licker. They’re usually pictured with beards, ragged clothes, and a red cap. They arrive one by one on the 13 nights before Christmas, each staying for 13 days. End result: the country slowly fills up with weird seasonal houseguests.

David: Modern kids put a shoe in the window. Sometimes the Yule Lads leave a small gift in the shoe. Sometimes they leave a rotten potato.

David: Stories about Grýla start showing up in writing as far back as the fourteenth century, although she doesn’t get officially tied to Christmas until the 1800s, when the cat and the Yule Lads join the party. She’s basically the personification of winter in a place where winter can get scary, fast.

David: Over the years, there have been attempts to sanitize these characters, to make them a little more cuddly and a little less like child-eating mountain monsters. Icelanders have pushed back. They like their folklore weird.

David: So for now, it looks like Grýla, her enormous cat, and their thirteen deeply suspicious sons will be scaring children—and handing out the occasional potato—for many Christmases to come.

Melissa: So the last one is true.

David: It is! In December 2013, at the gates for two WestJet flights to Calgary, passengers saw a big blue kiosk with a life-size, talking Santa on a screen. You scanned your boarding pass, and Santa greeted you by name and asked what you wanted for Christmas. ‘Ho, ho, ho! Happy holidays, Melissa! And what would you like for Christmas?’

David: People treated it like a joke. A little boy asked for a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. A couple threw out that they wanted a big-screen TV. One guy said he needed socks and underwear. Then everyone boarded, settled into their seats, and forgot about it. It was just a cute airport gimmick. It was not a gimmick.

David: As soon as the plane doors closed, more than 150 WestJet employees in Calgary sprinted into action. They’d been watching those Santa conversations in real time. While the plane was in the air, teams fanned out into nearby stores with a shopping list that included toys, cameras, snowboards, tablets, clothes, and a giant TV. They brought everything back to the airport, wrapped each present, and labeled it with passengers’ names and flight numbers.

David: When the flight landed in Calgary, the passengers walked to baggage claim expecting suitcases and duffel bags. Instead, the conveyor belt started spitting out Christmas presents. Tags matched the names they’d scanned at the gate. The kid got his Thomas set. The couple got their TV. The man who’d asked for socks and underwear — got socks and underwear.

David: WestJet filmed the whole thing and released it as a video called ‘Christmas Miracle: Real-Time Giving.’ It went viral—tens of millions of views—and the campaign wound up in marketing case studies as one of those rare stunts that actually felt like a gift instead of an ad. We’ll put that video into our show notes; it’s really cute.

David: And then WestJet made it a tradition.

David: The next year, instead of surprising middle-class flyers, they flew a team down to a poor community in the Dominican Republic. They set up a little ‘Santa’s workshop’ on the beach, asked residents what they wanted: dolls, a washing machine, an engine for a motorbike taxi — and then threw a massive Christmas party where those gifts rolled out one by one. 

David: After that came 12,000 Mini Miracles, where WestJet staff spread out across their network and tried to grant as many small wishes as possible in a single day: airline tickets, surprise reunions, rent payments, even coffee for strangers. Then Fort McMurray Strong, where they used the Christmas Miracle banner to support families hit by the Alberta wildfires. Then 12 Flights of Christmas, turning a dozen ordinary flights into rolling surprise parties tied to ideas from kids in the Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada. And more recently, they’ve done softer versions built around family reunions and kids’ wish lists, but the basic pattern is the same: pick a group of people, listen hard to what they want, and then over-deliver. 

David: So yes, the whole thing is absolutely an ad campaign. It sells an image of WestJet as the airline that understands Christmas. But for a few hundred people on that 2013 flight—and for a village in the Dominican Republic, and for fire evacuees in Alberta. It was also just… real. They said what they wanted to Santa, and then a bunch of overcaffeinated airline staff made it happen.

David: It’s a lot of effort for a campaign that boils down to: ‘We heard you. Here you go. Happy Christmas.’ That’s two truths and a lie.

Melissa: Before we get into the books, I should mention that for this episode, we’re introducing a very scientific rating and pairing system for our books. We love all the books we’re recommending today. We’ll be rating each one for how much it delivers on Christmas spirit. And we’ll recommend a great movie with a similar vibe to watch after you’ve read the book.

Melissa: My first recommendation is ‘The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year’ by Ally Carter.

Melissa: Read this rom-com if you’re in the mood for a cup of hot chocolate with Bailey’s Irish Cream, marshmallows, whipped cream, and chocolate shavings with a tiny gingerbread man perched on top.

Melissa: It has everything good and sweet: a manor house setting with secret passages, cozy golden age mystery tropes, a cranky heroine who hates Christmas for REASONS, and plenty of holiday magic, including ridiculous reindeer sweaters. It’s a Hallmark Christmas movie cookie decorated with Knives Out frosting.

Melissa: It’s delicious fun, is what I’m saying.

Melissa: The main characters — Maggie and Ethan — are both mystery authors. They share a publisher and have a history together that’s slowly revealed throughout the book. At the beginning, all we know is that Maggie loathes two things with equal fervor: Christmas and Ethan Wyatt.

Melissa: Maggie writes cozy murder mysteries in the style of Eleanor Ashley. Eleanor is an homage to Agatha Christie. In this fictional world, Eleanor — now 80 years old — has written 99 novels and is the greatest crime writer of all time. HER backstory is a corker: She had no plumbing in her childhood home. She was pulled out of school in sixth grade because her family needed her to get a job. Her first novel was written on scraps of paper pulled out of the trash while she worked as a cleaning lady. She is the very definition of pluck and determination and, now, success. Our Maggie idolizes Eleanor and aspires to carry on her mystery-writing legacy.

Melissa: Ethan, on the other hand, writes thrillers. Maggie describes him in a very derogatory way as a ‘leather jacket’ guy. In her mind, he’s finger guns in human form. All flash and attitude, no substance. He’s handsome and charming, the kind of guy, she says, who could get voted prom king at a school he didn’t even go to. Most annoyingly, he always gets Maggie’s name wrong. He calls her Marcie no matter how many times she re-introduces herself.

Melissa: The book opens with a Christmas party at their publisher’s office. Maggie has been tricked into going and just as she’s about to ghost out of there, her editor hands her a mysterious envelope. Maggie has been invited to spend Christmas at Eleanor Ashley’s manor house in England. She’s all happy anticipation as she glides onto the private jet to fly across the Atlantic — until she realizes her arch-nemesis Ethan is also aboard.

Melissa: And then things go really wrong: A massive snowstorm traps them on the estate and the next morning, Eleanor, the Duchess of Death herself, has vanished from inside a locked room. Just as Maggie is trying to figure out what might have happened to Eleanor, another guest is poisoned. Then someone shoots at Maggie. The power goes out. The snow piles higher. And much to our delight, Christmas and murdery and romantical hijinks ensue.

Melissa: The author Ally Carter is really good at writing sweet romance. There’s humor and a sense of fun — you get why these people might fall for each other. She also gives the characters backstories that give them enough depth to care when they finally kiss. She wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite so-silly-I-love-it Christmas movies: ‘A Castle for Christmas.’ That’s about a romance author who goes to Scotland for Christmas and buys a castle from a grumpy Duke.

Melissa: This book has a lot more playfulness than that movie — and the mystery at its heart is good, too. There’s a classic, closed-circle-of-suspects cast that includes a bumbling detective, a duke and duchess, and a trusted butler, plus a niece, doctor, and lawyer with dubious motives. They’re all very much character types, but who cares? We’re here for Maggie and Ethan — their advance and retreat romance, their stolen embraces, and their teamwork to solve the mystery.

Melissa: I rate this book 11 out of 10 kisses under the mistletoe for bringing the holly jolly spirit. There’s the aforementioned snowstorm, plus a hedge maze blanketed in snow, Christmas sweaters that represent the 12 days of Christmas AND various reindeer, and — i neglected to mention this earlier — the mansion where they’re spending the holidays? It’s called Mistletoe Manor.

Melissa: If you enjoy Netflix Christmas movies and golden-age crime novels, I think you’ll like this book. It’s ‘The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year’ by Ally Carter.

Melissa: For a movie pairing: I recommend the new Netflix movie ‘Jingle Bell Heist.’ It’s a sparkly caper about a cute American girl and a cute British boy who team up to rob a posh department store on Christmas. There are Christmas decorations everywhere, sparkly snowfall on London streets, and excellent outfits including santa costumes and a glitzy ball that requires them to wear black-tie. It’s half rom-com, half heist movie, and it’s very fun.

David: My first book is ‘The Atlas of Christmas’ by Alex Palmer. The subtitle is ‘The Merriest, Tastiest, Quirkiest Holiday Traditions from Around the World.’ It’s a palm-sized book with about 250 pages. I suspect the publisher intended it to be a stocking-stuffer or an office gift or some such. But it’s got a full ‘round-the-world with a book’ vibe. It’s got little cultural doorways you can step through, one country at a time.

David: Palmer starts with the idea that makes this book what it is. Christmas is the ultimate shape-shifter holiday. It travels and borrows and adapts. It gets folded in with local history and weather and politics and food and folklore until you can barely recognize the original outline. And that’s not a problem, it’s the point. Christmas has had more adaptions than Scrooge. Which means — sidenote! — if you decide to take Christmas into your own hands, you’re not ‘ruining’ anything. You’re participating in the tradition. An ancient tradition.

David: Make the holiday you want! Everybody else did! Eat a sleeve of Oreos on Christmas Eve! Rewatch Broadchurch or Nightmare on Elm Street. Go to a hotel and order room service like you’ve just survived the breakup montage in a holiday rom-com. Create a new Christmas that honors your true self. Like countless civilizations have before.

David: Anyway. This book. It’s basically a little museum exhibit. It’s divided into Celebrations Around the World, then Christmas Characters, and then Fun and Feasts. You start with some warm-and-cozy staples—German Christmas markets, and Las Posadas in Mexico, which is about hospitality and acceptance and community. But pretty quickly we’re off to traditions that make you say ‘I’m sorry, what?’

David: Like the Czech Republic’s Golden Pig. There’s a tradition here that says if you fast on Christmas Eve, and really commit to it, you might see a golden pig appear. And that would be a sign of good fortune. And, you know, not low blood sugar. Catalonia has the Tió de Nadal: a Christmas log that, somehow, poops candy.

David: Starting around December 8, families bring home a hollow log, usually decorated with a goofy face and a little red hat. In the old days you might’ve cut your own; now most people just buy one. They tuck it under a blanket to ‘keep it warm.’ Every night the kids feed it bits of food. And then mysteriously those scraps are gone by morning. On Christmas Eve, the kids grab sticks and beat the log while singing a traditional song. The lyrics basically amount to: ‘If you don’t poop, I’m going to hit you with a stick… poop, log.’ Then they lift the blanket—Christmas miracle—and there’s a pile of treats: nuts, sweets, nougat, and small toys.

David: The Christmas Characters section is where you really see how different cultures have taken the same holiday and made very different casting decisions. Russia has Grandfather Frost. He’s got a sidekick granddaughter called Snow Maiden. Italy has La Befana, a gift-giving witch on a broomstick. In the Basque Country, families are waiting for a giant named Olentzero. Other cultures seem a lot more interested in Christmas bad guys. There’s Krampus, of course — half goat, half demon, horns, a long forked tongue. Some of these figures have roots that go back before Christianity, which means there’s a theory that Santa is a reaction to Krampus, not the other way around. Which I enjoy, because it suggests the original winter holiday dynamic was: “Here’s the demon who drags children away,” and then someone went, ‘Okay, but what if we tried… a nicer guy.’

David: But my personal favorite part of the book is Fun and Feasts, because that’s where it turns into pure sensory travel. You get decorations that feel like they belong in an art gallery, like Finland’s himmeli: which are delicate straw mobiles hung from the ceiling. They’re geometric and elegant. They look like modern sculpture, but they’re tied to old agricultural hopes for a good crop. Ukraine has pavuchky: little sparkling spiders that somehow manage to feel both eerie and beautiful. They’re like a fairy tale got loose in your living room. Georgia has the chichilaki, a shaggy little Christmas ‘tree’ made from shaved branches — and then, when the season ends, families burn it as a ceremonial release of the year’s troubles. It’s hard for me not to respect a little year-end fire ritual.

David: And then there’s the food! There are twelve-dish Christmas Eve suppers across parts of Eastern and Central Europe. Japan’s KFC-for-Christmas, which sounds like a prank until you realize it’s real. Jollof rice as a West African staple. French Yule log cake. Scandinavian mulled wine. Christmas has a table that stretches wider than you might expect.

David: One thing I want to emphasize: this is not a heavy scholarly tome, but it is well-sourced for what it’s trying to be. There’s a full sources section in the back, and you can see Palmer did the work. It’s a fun book you can trust.

David: ‘The Atlas of Christmas’ is a warm, weird, global holiday sampler platter, and a very on-brand Strong Sense of Place way to celebrate Christmas by remembering that everywhere has stories, and people have been inventing joy for a long time. On the jolly scale, I’m giving it 15 out of 10 Ukranian Christmas spiders.

David: For a movie go-along, I’m going to recommend ‘Jingle Bell Rocks!,’ a 2013 documentary about people who collect Christmas music. It feels like being invited into a secret club of music nerds whose whole mission is to prove that Christmas music can be surprising, soulful, and genuinely cool. This book, though, is ‘The Atlas of Christmas’ by Alex Palmer.

Melissa: My next recommendation is ‘The Dead of Winter: The Demons, Witches and Ghosts of Christmas’ by Sarah Clegg. This is an unusual travel guide to the shadow side of Christmas. It’s like if Rick Steves swapped genders and revealed himself to be a student of the dark arts — while wearing a Santa hat.

Melissa: The book opens just before dawn on Christmas Eve. The author Sarah Clegg has wrenched herself from her warm bed to go outside. It’s dark and cold. The wind is howling — so much it makes the bells on the Christmas wreath jangle. Sarah makes a point of telling us she hasn’t spoken to anyone since midnight. Nor has she looked into any fires. She’s ventured out on what’s called a Year Walk, a Swedish tradition that promises if you take a walk before dawn — without eating, drinking, talking, or looking at a fire — you’ll see ghostly representations of funerals in the coming year. You might even see your own.

Melissa: Sarah Clegg has a PhD in ancient history from Cambridge University. Her research on child-murdering demons is what brought her to this chilling Christmas Eve ritual. She writes, ‘I ran into Perchta, a monstrous witch with an iron nose, who travels house to house every Christmas… If she finds a child who hasn’t done their chores she slits open their belly, pulls out their guts, stuffs them with straw, and then sews up the wound with a ploughshare as a needle and a chain as thread. She is utterly, joyously monstrous.’

Melissa: That last sentence is the perfect encapsulation of Clegg’s tone and approach to this material: utterly, joyously monstrous.

Melissa: She spent a full winter immersing herself in the mythology and folklore of Christmas monsters. In this book, she delves into their history, where they originated, and why they take the forms they do. On this twisted holiday journey, we meet, among many others, Krampus, St. Lucy, the Lord of Misrule, malevolent mummers, the Green Knight, the Icelandic Yule Cat, a not-so-nice St. Nicholas, and Italy’s striga… the Christmas witches.

Melissa: What I love about this book is that it combines two kinds of research: the experiential and the academic. Clegg attended Christmas celebrations all over the UK and Europe, so she can tell us exactly what it was like to wander a Cotswold village with a marauding band of actors. She was whipped by Krampus at a parade in Salzburg, Austria. She watched the sunrise with thousands of people at Stonehenge on December 22. And she takes us along for the exciting ride of all of that.

Melissa: But she also knows her way around an archive and research library. Every chapter embraces that dichotomy.

Melissa: After sharing her in-person holiday adventures, she smoothly segues into history. And wow! is she good at talking about persnickety details in a way that makes them suspenseful and exciting.

Melissa: She’s also brilliant at footnotes. They’re sprinkled throughout the book like fairy lights, illuminating the main text or just giving Clegg an opportunity to throw in a funny aside. Do not skip the footnotes. They are a delight.

Melissa: Really, all of this book is a delight. I found her writing bold and vulnerable at the same time. And she got me in the first chapter. It’s about Carnival in Venice, its connection to Christmas, and how it evolved around the world. Here’s the opening bit:

‘I’m hurrying down a little side street just off the Grand Canal… A thick rain is falling… saturating the air until the entire shimmering city feels like it’s being slowly submerged. It’s a world of water and glittering reflections that swirl on slick stone and black canals, but I don’t have time to linger and drink it all in… I’m wearing a long black evening gown, and covering my face is a black and gold mask piled high with jewelled feathers. It’s Carnival, and I have a ball to go to.’

Melissa: And just like that, I was ready to book tickets to Venice in February. A masked ball? Yes, please.

Melissa: She continues with vivid descriptions of what she sees in the ballroom: opera singers, musicians, a juggler who tosses balls in time to a violinist who plays faster and faster, a fire-eater, harlequins on stilts, headdresses with horns so tall they brush the chandeliers. It sounds manic and magical. I still think I want to go.

Melissa: She continues: ‘It’s wonderful, rich, decadent, chaotic, and then, it’s too much… The only thing I want is to get out, away from it all. I walk into the palazzo’s courtyard, letting the wind bite at my skin and enjoying the ice in it… And then, slowly, I pull my coat back on, slip out of the gate and back into the empty streets.’

Melissa: Yes, girl! Embrace the mayhem and then introvert the hell out.

Melissa: This is a shortish book — just 208 pages — and the audiobook is great. Four hours! I went back and forth between audio and print. Clegg narrates the introduction, and it’s a treat to hear her voice welcoming you into her winter of chaotic Christmas capers.

Melissa: I give this book 15 out of 10 lashes from Krampus for snowstorms, baubles, saffron buns, boxes of chocolates, and the phrase ‘semi-benevolent monstrous Christmas women.’ It’s ‘The Dead of Winter: The Demons, Witches and Ghosts of Christmas’ by Sarah Clegg.

Melissa: For a movie pairing, you know it’s got to be the 2015 comedy-horror movie ‘Krampus.’ It has a stacked cast with Adam Scott and Toni Collette as the parents of a dysfunctional family that’s trying to have a cozy family Christmas — and then Krampus shows up. There are malevolent gingerbread men, possessed toys, dastardly elves, a massive snowstorm, and ALL THE Christmas decorations.

David: My second book is ‘Greenglass House’ by Kate Milford. The first line in this book is:

‘There is a right way to do things and a wrong way – if you’re going to run a hotel in a smugglers’ town.

David: The narrator goes on to inform you that smugglers might be rich in theory, but in practice they’ll pay you tomorrow … or in contraband fountain-pen cartridges that write in ‘illegal shades of green.’ That’s when I knew I was in good hands.

David: Greenglass House is technically a book for younger readers. Our main character, Milo Pine, is twelve, but it’s one of those middle-grade/YA-leaning mysteries that has enough atmosphere, craft, and emotional intelligence to keep an adult happy on the couch. It’s cozy without being cutesy, clever without being smug, and it has that old-fashioned pleasure of a big creaky house full of secrets. It’s also brisk and modern in the way it thinks about family, identity, and belonging.

David: And for our Christmas-themed show: yes. This is such a Christmas book—winter storms, holiday treats, the particular hush of an inn in the off-season, and the feeling that the world has narrowed down to lamplight, snow, and whoever happens to be in the house with you.

David: So the setup: Greenglass House is a famous smuggler’s inn perched above a harbor town called Nagspeake. In winter it’s usually quiet. Milo is looking forward to a low-key holiday with his adoptive parents (who are the innkeepers), basically planning to read, snack, and enjoy the calm. Then the guests show up. Milo is quite put off by that.

David: Not a normal trickle of tourists, but a strange handful of people who arrive all at once, each with their own luggage, their own agenda, and their own story about why they’re there. Some are prickly, some are charming, some are obviously lying, and at least one feels like trouble the moment they walk through the door. And then, as if the house itself wants to liven things up for the holidays, objects start to go missing.

David: Milo investigates. Milo and Meddy — she’s the cook’s daughter, sharp, allergic to nonsense, fun to be around. They begin following threads, comparing notes, and — I love this bit — using the logic and structure of Milo’s favorite role-playing game to chase clues and “run” the mystery like an adventure module. That element is handled with real affection. I suspect the author is a gamer herself. You get two bits from that. First, that imaginative play is a solid tool for making sense of the world. And second, that pretending to be someone else might be useful for exploring the limits of what you can do.

David: The delightful bits come pretty fast. There’s a a snowed-in, locked-room-ish setting with secrets seemingly everywhere. We are definitely in gothic territory here. It’s a closed space, there’s dramatic nature, secrets, a bit of the supernatural. There’s a parade of shady motives. There’s a good sensory hit of the smells and sights and tastes of Christmas at a small inn. There are stories within stories: folklore and personal histories and local legends that all start to play out with what’s happening.

David: If you like mysteries where the author plays fair—planting clues, letting you form theories, and then, you know, making you gasp anyway—this delivers. Kirkus praised Milford’s storytelling as ‘splendid,’ calling out the layered stories and the way all the threads tie together. Greenglass House also won the Edgar Award (Mystery Writers of America) for Best Children’s Novel. It was also recognized as a National Book Award nominee, which tracks, because it’s doing more than plot—it’s doing theme.

David: This book has things to say about belonging and identity. Milo is adopted, and the book doesn’t treat that as, ‘oh, yeah, the kid’s an orphan!’ It’s part of how he experiences the world. There’s an honesty to the way Milo thinks about ancestry and belonging, and it’s not accidental. In Milford’s Author’s Note, she explains she began writing the book during her family’s international adoption process. She was reading and thinking about culture, heritage, and what it means to build a family across distance and history. That context adds a little bump to the story: the house has a past; the town has a past; the objects have past owners; and Milo is trying to understand how his own past fits into all of that.

David: The vibes in this book are fantastic. You’ve got snowy inn + smugglers + board games + stained glass + secret histories + cinnamon + danger. If you finish ‘Greenglass House’ and want to stay in this world, you absolutely can. Milford returned to Nagspeake and Greenglass House in several companion/sequel-ish novels: ‘Ghosts of Greenglass House,’ ‘Bluecrowne’ (which digs into earlier inhabitants and origins), and ‘The Thief Knot’ — plus ‘The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book,’ which leans into the ‘strangers in an inn, stories revealed, secrets exposed’ pleasure in a fresh way. 

David: So: it’s a Christmas book. It’s also a mystery with a strong, emotional end. It’s a warm story about family. And it’s the kind of ‘young reader’ novel that reminds you, very convincingly. that a well-made story doesn’t care how old you are. It just wants you to come inside, take off your boots, and follow the trail of clues through the snow. It gets 15 out of 10 illegal shades of green.

David: If I was going to pair it with a movie, I might think about Klaus. Klaus is a very pretty, hand-drawn animated Christmas movie. It takes the Santa myth and flips it into a funny, bittersweet story about a downtrodden postman and a reclusive toymaker in a small Norwegian town. It’s warm and inventive and moving, and so, so pretty. We’ll put the trailer in show notes.

David: This book is ‘Greenglass House’ by Kate Milford.

Melissa: My final recommendation is ‘12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas’ by Natasha Bache.

Melissa: A few years ago, we were invited to a Christmas party, and I decked myself out in a red sweater that looks like it’s made of tinsel, a red tulle skirt, red lipstick, and dangling earrings in the shape of metallic red bows.

Melissa: Did I look like I’d been sprayed by a Christmas spirit fire hose? Was it too much? Probably. But that’s beside the point because it was over-the-top festive fun, and I felt equal parts silly and awesome.

Melissa: This book is that outfit in prose form. If you’re wondering, ‘Mel, is it a good book?’ you’re asking the wrong question. It’s deranged and completely implausible, and I loved it so much. It’s like a Yuletide version of ‘And Then There Were None.’

Melissa: Here’s the setup: Our heroine Olivia has married into the wealthy Weiss family. Her husband Miles seems lovely, but his family? His family is terrible. Every year, Olivia, Miles, and their two kids spend the entire Christmas season at the Weiss family’s manor house in North Wales.

Melissa: But this year is the last time. Because Olivia and Miles have decided they’re moving to Australia. This is the last Christmas they’ll have to appease Grandma Toots, put up with Aunt Clem’s shrill voice, dodge one-on-one conversations with drunk uncle, and weather Miles’ condescending perfect brother, perfect sister-in-law, and perfect nieces. Miles’ mom is also a piece of work, but we’ll come back to her later.

Melissa: So, they arrive at the mansion and the Christmas festivities kick off with a bang. Just before announcing that yes, the whole family will be participating in the annual Murdery Mystery Dinner Party that night, Mommy and Daddy Weiss drop a bombshell: They’ve changed their will and have cut Miles and Olivia out of it. How dare they move to Australia!

Melissa: And then there’s a massive snowstorm.

Melissa: Now at this point, I thought I knew where the book was going: They’re all snowed in and they’re playing a murder mystery game, but someone is going to die for real.

Melissa: I was wrong! Yes, someone dies. Of course they do. In fact, a lot of someones die. But not during the murder mystery game. The author is up to something way more unhinged than that. Each of the victims is picked off while participating in a Christmasy activity. There’s death by gingerbread house poisoning, death by snowman, a terrible tragedy at the Christmas tree farm, and on and on. Turns out, in the wrong hands, making merry can be very dangerous.

Melissa: This book has a delightful black humor about it. Olivia narrates the story and among her recaps of what’s happening, there are diary entries — confessions, really — written by the killer. But we don’t know who that is.

Melissa: The first victim meets their fate while hanging Christmas lights on the roof. They get zapped and are found dangling upside down, their feet tangled in brightly-colored light bulbs. This is what the killer writes in their diary entry:

‘The lights burned brightly – too bright – pink, blue, red, yellow. Then the sparks flew… But it wasn’t that that killed him… what finally put an end to his miserable life was when I gave the ladder a good kick from under him and he went crashing down onto the patio.’

Melissa: Mayhem aside, it turned out to be a pretty good mystery. Three times while reading, I was convinced I knew who the murderer was. And I felt disappointed to have figured it out. Only to learn I was completely wrong because that person ended up dead. Usually next.

Melissa: Also, pro tip: If you read this book — you probably know right now if this one is for you — be sure to go back and read the prologue after you’ve finished the rest of the book. The author is even sneakier than she seems.

Melissa: How Christmas-y is this? There’s so much snow, christmas tree shopping, a character in a Santa suit, a tropical Christmas party, and a gingerbread house building competition. Keep in mind that all of these activities happen throughout the book, before, during and after the many murders. Because the matriarch, ol’ Mommy Dearest of the Weiss family — keeps insisting that CHRISTMAS MUST GO ON. I cast her in my imagination as Harriet Walter, the awful mom from Succession.

Melissa: I give this 13 out of 10 smashed Christmas baubles for keeping it merry, bright, and perilous. That’s ‘12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas’ by Natasha Bache.

Melissa: For a movie pairing: I recommend one of my favorite movies of all time — ‘Ready or Not.’ It’s a comedy-horror from 2019. A pretty young bride marries into a super-rich family who made its fortune selling board games. On her wedding night at the family mansion, she learns she has to play a deadly game of hide and seek. It’s not a Christmas movie, but it should be. The manor house is beautiful and menacing, there’s lots of candlelight and secret passages and oil paintings of domineering ancestors. Just pretend there’s a Christmas tree in the corner of the music room, and you’ll be set.

David: And that’s it! That’s season 7. Visit our show notes at strongsenseofplace.com for all your emotional holiday needs. We’ll have trailers for some of our favorite Christmas movies, videos of WestJet employees surprising people with Christmas presents, and a video of a guy who surveyed over 64,000 people about the goof on ‘Jingle Bells’ that starts with ‘Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg.’

Melissa: Now is a great time to join our Patreon! I have 144 books in the Christmas folder on my Kindle and a list of 177 Christmas movies, most of which we’ve watched. On our Patreon, I’m going to play match-maker and take requests for holiday books and movies that suit your current mood. If you want a personal recommendation for Christmas, join us on Patreon. We’re still running our annual membership special, and you can join for as little as $3 per month.

David: We will be back in 2026 with more great destinations and more great reads. In the meantime, we hope you have a lovely, lovely holiday season. May you find peace and gratitude and all the love you need and then just a little bit more. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you soon.

[cheerful music]

Top image courtesy of Curated Lifestyle/Unsplash.