The Creepy Father Christmas Home Invasion Plays You’ve Never Heard Of

Mummers, by Robert Seymour, 1836

One of my favourite folk customs is the ‘Mummers’ tradition, where a bunch of disreputable characters in masks turn up at your door, demand to be let in, perform a comic play whether you wanted one or not, and then insist on being paid before they leave you in peace.

(Quite frankly, given how hard it is to get new writing funded, more young playwrights like myself might need to resort to this kind of guerrilla-style theatre.)

Fourteenth century depiction of disguised mummers. By Flemish illuminator Jehan de Grise and his workshop, 1338-1344.

Mummers’ plays date back to the medieval period but the oldest surviving scripts are from the 18^th century. The prevailing theory is that the word ‘mumming’ describes the act of disguising oneself, and the tradition is related to pantomime (another Christmas staple here in the UK) and the Italian Commedia dell’arte. There are brightly-costumed characters who appear in the New Year’s Day Mummers Parade in the US, but the version I’m exploring today is the type of mummers you’ll find in the UK. They’re a little more low-key…and a lot more horror-coded.

These plays use a host of characters who are still easily recognisable, from caricatures of social types to legendary English figures like St George and Robin Hood. Their plots are simple (and often very silly) with plenty of room for improvisation and audience interaction.

One recurring theme is the ability of the ‘doctor’ character to magically revive a person who has been killed. You can read this as a version of the Christian resurrection story, or as a metaphor for the cycle of death and rebirth represented by the seasons. Modern revivals sometimes enlarge upon the environmental implications of this imagery, playing on the idea of nature in recovery from destruction and neglect.

The doctor revives St George outside St Albans Cathedral, pic by St Albans Mummers, 2015

Old Father Christmas

Father Christmas took on a particular significance in England during the English Civil War (1642-1651). He was associated with the old conservative view of the world, connected to ideas of kingship, revelry and tradition. The royalists or ‘Cavaliers’ who fought for the king, saw him as a symbol of the world as it should be. For parliamentarians or ‘Roundheads,’ he stood for an unhealthy and unwholesome status quo that desperately needed to be overturned. Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas outright in 1647, sending Santa into exile until the Restoration in 1660.

Pro-Christmas pamphlet by Royalist poet John Taylor, 1652.

Father Christmas possibly became a stock character in the mummers’ plays during this period. Playhouses had also been abolished by the parliamentarians, and theatre troops survived by touring the countryside, covertly performing plays wherever they found a willing audience. Here, Father Christmas became a popular narrator figure, who would open the play with some variant on the traditional ‘In Comes I’ announcement:

“In Comes I, Old Father Christmas…”

From Project Britain.

Father Christmas: Home Invader

The home invasion genre of horror films does exactly what it says on the tin: it plays on the fear of someone violating the safety of your home. (I talked about it at length in my recent article on Edward Gorey’s ‘The Doubtful Guest.’) Filmmakers have exploited the overlap between Father Christmas and the frightening spectre of the home invader in the sub-genre of Christmas horror films, like the recent ultra-gory Terrifier 3:

In the mummers’ tradition, Santa isn’t quite so murderous but he’s got a bit more of an edge than he does in, for example, Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas.’ He isn’t actually coming to give us presents this time, he’s barging in with his troop of disguised actors ready to force you to watch their play:

Here come I, old Father Christmas, Welcome , or welcome not. I hope old Father Christmas Will never be forgot.

It’s also he who closes the performance with the traditional demand for money:

So, ladies and gentlemen, your sport now has ended. Therefore, behold this box, which is highly commended! The box would speak, if it had but a tongue, Come throw in your money and think it no wrong. (Father Christmas starts collecting money in his box.)

In the version I’ve been quoting from, he is even ‘swinging a mighty club’ at this point, presumably threatening to bash out the brains of anyone who doesn’t cough up. It’s a sort of theatrical protection racket led by a violent Santa.

St. George speaks with Father Christmas in the 2024 AFC Mummers play on December 18 in the Great Hall. Photo by Stan Murgolo, Library of Congress

This is a version of Father Christmas who represents the real spirit of the season, not a jolly gift-giver but a robust force of nature, a personification of the power of good cheer in the midst of winter. No one can keep him out, not Cromwell, not the snow, and not you either so don’t try to resist. And when he’s finished he, like every good home invader, will steal away again into the night leaving you not quite the person that you were before he came knocking at the door.

So spare a thought for anyone who will be accosted by a theatrical Santa this Christmas and maybe keep a few coins to hand just in case he pays you a visit. Want to read more? Stephen Winick is your man, his article here is an excellent resource — and he has also played Father Christmas in a mumming play.

P.S. As I was researching this article I thought ‘why hasn’t anyone done a home invasion horror film about mummers?’ and it turns out they have! Click here to watch the short film ‘Lovely Mummers’ (2018) where the masked invaders torment a family in Newfoundland, Canada. There isn’t a Father Christmas in this story since it’s a Canadian branch of the mumming family tree with its own specific history, but it’s great to see these old customs being referenced in new films.

This is a special Christmas article as we take a brief break from horror moments for December. Usually, my horror moments are published on Thursdays and a wide variety of articles exploring the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more are published on Mondays.

If you want to help me keep going, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll be able to read my archive so you won’t have to worry about losing access to the back catalogue, and every month I publish one thing for paid subscribers only which you can browse here. If you can’t stretch to that, please like, share, comment, subscribe or recommend and thank you so so much for your support!