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American Prestige

Re-Post - The Medievalist's Guide to Christmas w/ Eleanor Janega

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

News, History, Politics

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Danny and Derek welcome back to the podcast Eleanor Janega, medieval historian, author, and broadcaster, to get down to brass tacks: What is Christmas? They discuss its practice in early and medieval Christian societies, mummers’ plays and gambling, Saint Nicholas providing dowries and resurrecting boys killed for their meat, the post-Reformation treatment of Christmas, and more. Grab a copy of Eleanor’s book The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey folks, Derek here to wish a happy holidays to you and yours.

0:03.6

For a limited time, American Prestige is celebrating with a special discount on annual

0:07.7

subscriptions. Get one today for just $45 for your first year. That means you'll get all of our

0:13.2

content, including weekly bonus episodes, specials, and great series like our new Chinese

0:18.1

prestige for 10% off the regular price. Use the code Xmas 2025, that's XMAS,

0:24.7

2020, when you subscribe to unlock the deal. This offer expires on January 2nd, so please take

0:31.2

advantage while you can, and thanks for listening. Merry Christmas prestige heads.

0:58.7

Welcome to American prestige.

1:00.5

I'm Danny Bessner, here as always with my friend and comrade Derek Davison.

1:05.6

And we're very extremely excited to welcome back to the podcast today.

1:10.2

Eleanor Yaniga.

1:11.4

Eleanor, you probably already know her,

1:13.5

but she is a medieval historian

1:15.2

and also author of the once and future sex.

1:21.2

Eleanor, thank you so much for joining us.

1:23.3

Thank you so much for having me back.

1:25.0

I love to be a repeat champion.

1:27.9

You're officially, I think, along with Patrick Wyman, you're now officially one of our pre-modern

1:34.5

show historians. Yeah, you're on the pre-modern desk. A very prestigious. A very big moment for you

1:40.6

as your career. So I hope you take it and really appreciate it on this wonderful

1:46.6

Christmas Day. So we invited Eleanor. You'll be unsurprised to learn to talk about Christmas.

1:53.1

And so we were thinking, as we were talking off Mike beforehand, we might just start

...

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