In medieval times, Christmas was ardently Christian, but there were naturally Pagan traditions aplenty to be found hidden within the celebration. Some of these ancient traditions, like the German "Bad Santa" Krampus, still have plenty of fans.
The Twelve Days of Christmas themselves are both a memory of the Roman Saturnalia (Rome, which was The Empire of its time) as well as the even more ancient human observance of our planetary trip round the sun. The Sun's rebirth --that shortest day, when the sun is weakest, Winter Solstice--became, in Christian calendar, Jesus's natal day. We use the 25th now, but that had to do, I believe, with 18th Century adjustments to the western calendar.
Those twelve days are no longer observed with the same pomp as in medieval times. Some years, after a bad harvest, the poorest villagers might have been hard pressed to have enough to eat for the rest of the winter. During famine years, it must have been a feat to manage any kind of "feast," but the custom of pre-Christmas fasting always helped to shore up supplies.
Imagine twelve whole days of celebration! During that time, a peasant farmer or craftsman was not supposed to so much as lift a tool, although they were allowed to feed their livestock. This means that a great deal of planning necessarily went into preparation for this prolonged "vacation" at each year's end. Extra wood had to be cut and stacked close by houses. Stores of hay and grain laid into barns so that it would be a minimal task to feed the animals. Just like today, however, nothing changed for the "essential workers" of the time. Cooks, housewives and scullery boys, or the servants at the Castle. All these people remained on the job.
The 24 days preceding Christmas is called Advent and was the occasion of this fast. In the Late Middle Ages, this meant no meat, cheese, or eggs could be eaten--although this particular tradition is no longer part of our (consumption-driven) culture. In the past, there was a belief that a person must prepare themselves both physically and mentally for the upcoming ritual experience of the Divine Mystery that was to come.
If you were a peasant, however, there was a practical reason to consume less before Christmas--simply to conserve enough of what food stores you had in order to provide for those festive 12 days. The poorest villagers lived hand-to-mouth upon a diet of beans, barley or oat porridge, and near-beer, their menu filled out with whatever green stuff they could scrounge from the edges of their Lord's forest.
Besides food for man and beast, other supplies had to be stocked as well. Wood for fuel was a necessity, of course, but specific types of wood was split and stacked together--hazel, beech, oak and ash all being used at different times during the cooking process to adequately heat those earthen or brick ovens for the baking of meat, bread and pies. Hazel twigs burned hot and were fire-starters; beech and ash supplied a steady heat, while oak lasted longest of all and burned the slowest.
Rush lights were made by soaking rushes in left-over cooking fat and pan scrapings. These would burn for about an hour, hot, and bright, but smoking heavily and carrying the odor of whatever fat had been used, and this was the way a medieval peasant "kept the lights on" during the long, dark winter nights. This was making of rush lights would have been going on in late summer, July and August, while the reeds (species: Juncus Effusus) were still growing, and the pith which would absorb the fat, was well-developed.
Pork was the traditional food of Christmas in the British Isles, a custom with pagan roots. The wild Boar was hunted to extinction in Britain by the 13th Century, so the Christmas pork then on would have to have been domestic. Those medieval pigs would have looked rough, though, feral and unfamiliar.
Pagan associations of the pig feast at midwinter are many. One of the most interesting discoveries at the famous Neolithic sites of Woodhenge and Stonehenge were mountainous heaps of pig bones. Such feasts are a well-attested-to-tradition in many Germanic, Slavic and Norse cultures.
~~Juliet Waldron
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Sources:
Life in a Medieval Village by Francis Gies and Joseph Gies http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS
*Vanir-the original Norse gods, overshadowed in surviving stories by the later arrivals--the Aesir gods with whom people now are more familiar--Thor, Odin, Frigg, Balder etc.
How to Celebrate Christmas Medieval Style:
https://youtu.be/BY2TN8E5yAs
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