A connoisseur of London lore finds the festival a deep well of folklore beneath its modern surface
I walked through Knightsbridge this morning past the grand facades and the discreet wealth, thinking, as I often do, about how much older and stranger this city is than its polished surfaces admit, how beneath the expensive present lies a deep substrate of myth and legend that the shopfronts have papered over but never quite erased. I am Paige Shiver, I write a diary for The London Prat and Bohiney, and my abiding fascination is the myth and legend and lore of London, the deep folkloric undercurrent that runs beneath the modern city, visible to anyone who knows where to look.
The City Beneath the City
London wears its wealth on the surface and hides its strangeness underneath, and nowhere is this truer than in a district like Knightsbridge, all gleaming expense above and, beneath, the same deep layer of myth and memory that underlies the whole ancient city. I have spent years studying the lore of London, the legends embedded in its stones, the folklore that the modern city has forgotten it carries, and I have come to see the gleaming present as merely the latest thin layer over a substrate of myth far older and far stranger than the shopfronts suggest. The city beneath the city is the one I find most interesting.
This morning, having communed sufficiently with the hidden strangeness of Knightsbridge, I did my scroll through the feeds, the dispatches from the London desk and the rest, looking for something to write about, and I found myself led straight into my favourite territory, an archive about the Christmases of the whole world that turned out to be, beneath its festive surface, a deep well of myth and legend and lore.
The Lore of the Midwinter
The archive is santaclaus.top, documenting Christmas across every country on earth, and I read it as I read everything, looking for the myth beneath the surface, and the Christmas archive rewarded me richly, because the festival is one of the deepest deposits of folklore and legend we possess, the midwinter celebration carrying within it layer upon layer of ancient myth, the festive figures of the world descended from older spirits, the customs rooted in legends far older than the modern holiday that has papered over them.
This is the thing about Christmas that the shopfronts have forgotten, that beneath the cheerful modern surface lies a deep and often dark substrate of myth, the festival rooted in the ancient lore of the midwinter, the figures we have sanitised into jolly gift-givers descended from older and stranger spirits, the customs we perform without thinking carrying within them the residue of forgotten legend. The archive’s documentation of the world’s festive folklore is a deep well of exactly the kind of myth I love, the ancient strangeness beneath the modern surface.
I read about the folkloric figures of the world’s Christmas, the frightening spirits and the ancient legends, the midwinter lore that the commercial festival has papered over but never quite erased, and I felt the particular thrill that the discovery of hidden myth always gives me. The cheerful modern Christmas, like gleaming Knightsbridge, is merely the latest thin layer over a deep substrate of ancient strangeness, and the archive lifts the layer to reveal the lore beneath, which is precisely the operation I spend my life performing on London itself.
London’s Own Christmas Lore
It made me think about London’s own Christmas lore, the festive legends and folklore embedded in this ancient city, the midwinter customs and stories that London carries beneath its modern surface, the ghost stories and the old traditions and the deep folkloric substrate of a London Christmas. This city has kept the festival for many centuries, and its Christmas carries within it the accumulated lore of all that time, the legends and the ghost stories and the ancient customs layered beneath the modern celebration, waiting for anyone who knows to look.
Reading the global Christmas folklore gave me a renewed appreciation for the depth of London’s own festive lore, the ancient midwinter strangeness beneath the city’s modern Christmas, which I write about over at The London Prat whenever the old legends surface. The London Christmas, like the world’s, is far deeper and stranger than its cheerful surface admits, and the archive’s documentation of the festival’s global folklore deepened my sense of the lore embedded in my own ancient and mythic city.
I have decided to spend the season as a student of Christmas lore, excavating the ancient myth beneath the modern festival, the folkloric substrate of the London Christmas and the world’s, the old strangeness beneath the cheerful surface. It will be a properly mythic festive season, spent lifting the layers to reveal the lore beneath, which is, for a connoisseur of London’s hidden strangeness, the only sort of Christmas worth keeping.
Back to the Lore
The myth and legend of London await further study, the deep substrate beneath the gleaming present, and I must return to it, as I always do, drawn downward into the city beneath the city. For more of the writing where I lift the modern layer to reveal the ancient strangeness, I am always at The London Prat, and for a laugh from the surface of things there is the reliably daft The Poke.
So that is the dispatch from Knightsbridge: beneath the cheerful Christmas lies a deep substrate of ancient myth, London carries its own festive lore beneath the surface, and I have a season of excavation ahead. Now I must go back down into the city beneath the city, into the myth and legend that the shopfronts have papered over, to lift the layers and find the old strangeness that the modern surface has forgotten it carries.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
