The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas: Day One — Christmas Monsters

Boy, 2020 has been a year, hasn’t it? Monsters would feel right at home here, I think. Let’s meet one of them. Okay, here’s a weird one for you. What do you get when you cross a horse’s skull, a bedsheet, and a book of Dr. Seuss? … Well, the Welsh get Mari Lwyd. Mari … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas: Day One — Christmas Monsters

Boy, 2020 has been a year, hasn’t it? Monsters would feel right at home here, I think. Let’s meet one of them.

Okay, here’s a weird one for you.

What do you get when you cross a horse’s skull, a bedsheet, and a book of Dr. Seuss?

…

Well, the Welsh get Mari Lwyd.

Mari Lwyd is definitely what you’d call a party animal. The “Gray Mare” is a bedazzled horse’s skull that’s carried around on a pole, the bearer being hidden under a white sheet. Mari Lwyd and her entourage go from house to house (or from pub to pub, because booze) singing Christmas carols and being generally rowdy. When Mari Lwyd shows up at the door, her posse and the folks inside have an insult contest in rhyme — a “yo mamma” fight brought to you by Dr. Seuss. No matter who wins, Mari Lwyd is invited into the house (or the pub, because BOOZE). The theory is that she is so disturbing that evil spirits are freaked out just by looking at her, and vacate the premises.

In Celtic Britain, the horse was a symbol of power and fertility. White or gray horses were thought to have the power to cross between this world and the next. So the Gray Mare, dressed in white with ribbons and spangles decorating her skull, returns from the Underworld at the turning of the year. She brings luck to any place she enters, in keeping with the Christmas spirit.

And the monstrous fun coninues! Ask a Mortician is here to school you on some of my favorite monsters of Christmas. Yay! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdX3BqF1s9Y&t=8s 

For more Christmas monsters, check out Spirits of Christmas, available online at Barnes and Noble and at Amazon, and at http://www.bookshop.org. When you order from Bookshop, you’re supporting independent bookstores — Bookshop puts all the profit into a kitty, and divvies it up at the end of the month between small bookstores. So they all benefit when you buy there.

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas is being brought to you with the help of Weird Darkness, your home for, well, weirdness! Go check out the podcast at http://www.weirddarkness.com. And tell Darren Marlar I said hey.