Have you ever wondered why one of Ruan Cathedral's towers is called the Tower of Butter, or what

animals have faced trials in courts for, or even how the black country got its name?

Well, you can find the answers to questions like these and hundreds more in our new book,

The History Hit Misscellany. It's the perfect present for any history fan.

It's available to buy now from your favourite bookshop or by visiting historyhit.com forward slash

book. Welcome to this festive episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis.

I thought today we could take a break from all the Christmas madness to look at the development

of the season through the Middle Ages and when some of those elements that we might recognise

as quintessential to Christmas first emerged. I've got a fire going, I've got a good supply of

mince pies, a big pot of stilton and an even bigger bottle of port and I'm ready to make my

full-bellied, bleary-eyed way through a medieval Christmas day. The first and most obvious

matter to deal with is the name of this celebration. Christmas is a slightly shortened version of

Christ's mass. It appears in various forms through the medieval period combining Christaise

from the Greek translation of the Hebrew word meaning Messiah or anointed and the Latin

Mesa, the celebration of the Eucharist. Xmas is another further abbreviation of the word,

which is often frowned upon and discouraged and you can find online style guides that will say

don't use Xmas, it's too informal but it does appear in middle English texts. What we recognise

as the letter X is in fact the Greek letter chi and it's used as an abbreviation of the Greek

Christos which begins with the letter chi. Anglo-Saxons referred to the period as midwinter

and sometimes as nativity. Old English contains references to Yule, a word and a celebration

that has Viking and Scandinavian heritage which covered December and January and eventually

became associated with Christmas. By the late 14th century the Old French word Noel derived from

...