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 day seven of our Victorian Christmas countdown the twenty five strangest days of Christmas. Before Victorians made Christmas a cozy family holiday, it was a loud, chaotic winter festival, full of demanding singers and drunken parades marty gras but in the snow. In medieval and early modern England, groups of revelers would go house to house demanding food, ale, money, and sometimes indoor heating rites. If the homeowners refused, the revelers sang insults.

0:35 Speaker 1: Yes, caroling was originally a musical shakedown. By the Victorian era, this tradition still lingered just tidier, but records from the eighteen thirties describe bands of boisterous youths roaming through London, singing so loudly that police were dispatched to redirect their spirits. Elsewhere. Christmas wasn't always quiet. It was rowdy, merry chaos.

1:03 Speaker 2: Sponsored by wasashield. Noise blocking holiday window shutters keep the carrollers out while still appearing festive wasa shield because sometimes peace on earth begins with soundproofing.

1:15 Speaker 1: Tomorrow we descend into the glowing hearth of tradition, the Yule log burned for twelve days straight, yes, twelve hope you stalked would