The 25 Strangest days of Christmas Day 7 - “Drunk caroling + street parades + people demanding food from wealthy homeowners."

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Strange History Podcast and

0:03 Speaker 1: day seven of our Victorian Christmas countdown the twenty five

0:07 Speaker 1: strangest days of Christmas. Before Victorians made Christmas a cozy

0:11 Speaker 1: family holiday, it was a loud, chaotic winter festival, full

0:15 Speaker 1: of demanding singers and drunken parades marty gras but in

0:19 Speaker 1: the snow. In medieval and early modern England, groups of

0:23 Speaker 1: revelers would go house to house demanding food, ale, money,

0:28 Speaker 1: and sometimes indoor heating rites. If the homeowners refused, the

0:33 Speaker 1: revelers sang insults. Yes, caroling was originally a musical shakedown.

0:39 Speaker 1: By the Victorian era, this tradition still lingered just tidier,

0:44 Speaker 1: but records from the eighteen thirties describe bands of boisterous

0:49 Speaker 1: youths roaming through London, singing so loudly that police were

0:53 Speaker 1: dispatched to redirect their spirits. Elsewhere. Christmas wasn't always quiet.

1:00 Speaker 1: It was rowdy, merry chaos.

1:03 Speaker 2: Sponsored by wasashield. Noise blocking holiday window shutters keep the

1:07 Speaker 2: carrollers out while still appearing festive wasa shield because sometimes

1:12 Speaker 2: peace on earth begins with soundproofing.

1:15 Speaker 1: Tomorrow we descend into the glowing hearth of tradition, the

1:19 Speaker 1: Yule log burned for twelve days straight, yes, twelve hope

1:24 Speaker 1: you stalked would