Bonus: Christmas Crimes!

Join Annie and Jenny as they get in the festive mood and journey back to the Yuletide crimes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The reformation resulted in the banning of many celebrations, including yuletide festivities. Those caught celebrating were brought before the Kirk Sessions, and this resulted in strangely detailed records of the celebratory practices of the time. Guising and cross-dressing, dancing, eating goose, and baking bread were all punishable by law, listen in to find out more about each tradition.

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References:

Barbara Hector, Is Hogmanay Dying Out? Not in Rural Scotland, Aberdeen Press and Journal, December 1932.

Dictionaries of the Scots Language: https://dsl.ac.uk/

Digitised Kirk Session Minutes, National Records of Scotland: https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk 

Margo Todd, Profane Pastime and the Reformed Community: The Persistence of Popular Festivities in Early Modern Scotland, Journal of British Studies, 2000.

Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland, 2002.

Robert Crammond, The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, Vol 1, Blackie, Fullarton & Co., 1828.

William Crammond, Steven Ree (ed), The records of Elgin, 1234-1800, The New Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1903.