Something something obligatory “Christmas in July” joke… it’s Hogfather time!
Summary
Ridcully has found a door that says it should never be opened, but wants it opened because there’s supposed to be a bathroom on the other side and he wants it for his own. Susan is working as a governess who kills monsters for the children she takes care of with a fireplace poker—she’s concerned that she’s begun to remember the future again, after having avoided it for two whole years. An Auditor of Reality comes to Lord Downey, head of the Assassin’s Guild, and commissions their services. They want the Hogfather killed, which should be impossible as he’s not quite real as far as Downey understands it. He calls in Mr. Teatime, who is unnerving even by assassin standards. It turns out that Teatime has already considered ways to kill the Hogfather (as well as a number of other mythical figures, and also Death), so he is pleased to take on the assignment. One of the children Susan takes care of worries that there might not be a Hogfather because a kid of the playground said it was just your dad doing it. Susan assures her that there is.
Mr. Teatime assembles a group of criminals to help him enact his plan. They assemble their crew and hitch a ride from a carter named Ernie, advising him to forget everything he sees and hears. Teatime gets Ernie to show them his snuffbox that contains a magical substance and opens a portal to another place, murders him, and takes the reins of his cart. Death comes to collect Ernie, looking about the Auditors; he’s sensed that there’s something off about what’s happening. The Death of Rats collects the latest mouse when the Hogfather appears… or rather Death appears dressed as the Hogfather. The Death of Rats follows Death onto the roof and hears him talking to someone obscured behind the sacks in his sleigh (it’s Albert, of course), saying that he’s worried because the notes left by children indicate that they don’t really believe anymore. The Death of Rats watches Death go, then has a conversation with a raven about what he just saw and hitches a ride.
Buy the Book
A Mirror Mended
Susan is drinking at Biers trying to have a night to herself when the Death of Rats and the raven show up and tell her what they’ve seen. Susan insists that she doesn’t have a grandfather and that they have to go, accidentally knocking the Death of Rats into an ashtray. They leave and Susan tries to pretend nothing has happened. Albert tries to give Death advice on how to better embody the role of the Hogfather so that it’s convincing. Albert doesn’t think this is any of Death’s business, but he also knows that if he doesn’t do this job right now, no one will. Susan goes back to the Gaiter’s home and boots out a bogeyman who harassed her earlier as Biers. The raven shows up and she tells him to leave her alone, then the Death of Rats tries to hide at the fairy at the top of the tree. He and the raven are there to warn Susan and she can feel time suddenly, the way she did before. Teatime and his crew are infiltrating a place and killing guards as they go.
Death shows up dressed as the Hogfather, and then Albert, and Susan tells them both off for this until Death explains that the Hogfather won’t be appearing this Hogswatch because he’s… dead. (Albert is not dying because they’re in the space allotted to the Hogfather when he delivers gifts, a space without time.) Susan demands to know why they are doing this, but Death insists that he cannot tell her and apologizes for intruding on her time. After they leave, Albert notes that Death insisting on Susan staying out of this almost guaranteed that she’d go poking her nose in, which was certainly not Death’s intention at all. Susan is angry, but she has to know why this is happening, and she stops Time. She calls for Binky and knows that if she takes this step, her life will stop being normal again—but she also knows that this is what she wants. She climbs onto Binky and goes.
Commentary
We’ve arrived at what I’ll call a halfway point in the Discworld series, given the body of work, and we’ve finally hit… perhaps not the most famous tome, but certainly among the ones that get quoted the most often.
From a craft standpoint, it’s not difficult to understand why the book is so beloved—the setup is basically flawless, starting with the rumination over beginnings and how we decide where they land and then how they frame our understanding of things. There’s also the introduction of Teatime, who perfectly straddles that line between interesting and horrifying, the sort of villain who unnerves you because he’s too cold to reach. (The opening bit where it’s suggested that the guild took him in because he lost both his parents, and that maybe should have been their first red flag, is, you know, the stuff actual horror movies are made of.) And combining that coldness with a smile always leaves an impression in the mind.
We’re back with Susan, who we learn has spent the last two years trying to forget everything about her that’s a little more than human. It makes sense, but it’s also heartbreaking; Susan is such a good character in the pantheon of “people who are too smart for their own good.” And I love the distinction that’s made between being educated and having instincts and intelligence, leaving us with this gem:
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
That sound you hear is generations crushed under student loan debt, crying out for vengeance and in desperate hope that others will also get that education despite their financial errors.
But what really stands out as you begin this story is the preoccupation with one of my favorite Pratchett-ian modes of thought: The question of what is real, and the understanding that reality is made up of beliefs. It’s relevant that Death is the one involved in a story about the Discworld version of Santa because he’s literally the only character who could be in this context. This is a story about the nature of being and existing with any sort of consciousness, and that’s precisely where the character lives. He’s the being who must shuttle us to and from our modes of reality via our beliefs.
Death is an anthropomorphic conception on the Disc, but I’ve also said before that I’d argue he’s the closest that Sir Terry comes to giving us his version of a deity. (The Discworld gods are enjoyable characters in their own right, but you never get the impression that Pratchett favors any of their religions or philosophies.) There’s a closeness to Death, his perspective and thoughts, and this book really cinches the idea in my mind. He’s the only appropriate character for a story like this, one that tackles how the human mind perceives the fantastical in order to shape what’s real.
Now, there’s a different awkwardness to this, which comes from the fact that Christians (even non-practicing people who come from Christian backgrounds) have a tendency to view Christmas and the figures involved as secular. That’s part of the scam, as it were—Christianity is a religion that profligates through conversion, and Christmas tries to make folks think it’s not a part to that conversation by often insisting that it’s barely religious at all. This is particularly true of the aspects of Christmas that are being pulled for this story, i.e. Santa Claus, flying reindeer, giving children presents, sending cards and putting up trees, and so on. But the fact of the matter is that these items are not neutral or secular, they’re still fully Christian concepts. (And yes, that’s still true even if people want to argue that elements of Christmas came from pagan holidays because we just talked about conversion, didn’t we? They’ve been usurped in these contexts.) So I’ll probably be talking a little bit more about how they’re used later on.
The section ends with Susan’s call to adventure, as it were, and I love her for fighting it, but I love her more for knowing that she can’t leave well enough alone. Reluctant heroes are so often the best kind because they remind us that having a measured reaction to something doesn’t mean that we’re standing still and doing nothing. Some of us just need a moment to get there.
Asides and little thoughts:
- I think it’s relevant that the longer these books go on, the more the ‘answers’ we’re supposed to glean become narrative asides from Didactylos saying “Things just happen. What the hell.” I mean… he’s right, and I find this about as philosophically comforting as anything.
- “Look at that, willya?” said the raven rhetorically. is something that I wish that raven had said to Edgar Allan Poe.
- The whole “yes, Twyla, there is a Hogfather” bit is obviously a riff on “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” But the thing that snagged me on this read was realizing that the phrase has become so ubiquitous that most people probably don’t actually know where it comes from anymore. (In case you didn’t, it’s from an editorial in The Sun from 1897.)
Pratchettisms:
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.
It separated those curs who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razor blades from the candyfloss of life.
“If I catch you being twee again I will knot your arms behind your head,” said Susan levelly.
After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.
To be a personality was to be a creature with a beginning and an end.
And, with ineffable smugness, they faded into the foreground.
The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of the pork pie because when you are the personification of the death of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.
Gawain and Twyla, who’d been named by people who apparently loved them, had been put to bed by the time Susan got in, at their own insistence.
Rage overtook Susan’s curiosity. It had to travel quite fast.
And Susan was bright enough to know that the phrase “Someone ought to do something” was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider “and that someone is me.”
Next week we read up to:
“I wish I knew who’s making that bloody tinkling noise,” said the Archchancellor.
“The whole “yes, Twyla, there is a Hogfather” bit is obviously a riff on “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” But the thing that snagged me on this read was realizing that the phrase has become so ubiquitous that most people probably don’t actually know where it comes from anymore. (In case you didn’t, it’s from an editorial in The Sun from 1897.)”
Yeah, and it was written by a fellow with a wonderfully Victorian moniker, Francis Pharcellus Church. Another fun fact: His editor at THE SUN was Edward Page Mitchell, possibly the best American SF writer in the Gilded Age. His best-known short story is probably “The Tachypomp’ (1874), which involves an attempt to achieve infinite speed. Other tales of interest include “The Ablest Man in the World” (1879 proto-cyborg story about a man with an artificial brain), “The Crystal Man” (1881 tale about a man becoming invisible), and “The Clock that Went Backward” (1881 time travel).
This is the only Pratchett book I hated. Like murder hated. To the point that I cannot even begin to fathom why anybody finds any charm in it at all. That said, I’m glad we’re finally here so I can follow along and maybe…maybe…re-evaluate my original impression.
This is a book about stories and it starts by contemplating how they have gradually had the blood taken out.
We are reintroduced to Susan Sto-Helit, Duchess of Sto-Helit, who is now an adult, probably in her early twenties, and working as a governess. We also meet Jonathan Teatime, an Assassin, who has a brilliant mind but brilliant like a fractured mirror and ultimately broken.
Susan sees a glimpse of the future and the Auditors hire the Assassin’s Guild to bring to an end the Hogfather and off we go.
Up first, the Death of Rats and Death trying to be the Hogfather with a checklist of things to do in each house. Don’t miss the footnote on Pascal’s Wager. The Hogfather’s hogs fly off into the night (at Death’s cry of APPLE! SAUCE!) and the Death of Rats meets Quoth the Raven, his transport and translator. The two of them try to convince Susan to help but she refuses to believe them or to believe in them.
Now comes the comic relief, otherwise known as the wizards and the sound, glingleglingleglingle. The Verruca Gnome appears although he is not yet name. BTW, a Verruca is a plantars wart.
Hogswatchnight bodes for Susan but first we get an interlude with Teatime and crew and learn a bit about them but not much about their goals.
Susan has ‘words’ with Death and learns that the Hogfather is DEAD so Death is trying to make do, not entirely successfully.
Another interlude discussing fairies and then back to Susan and Death (and Albert) having more words. Death explains what he can. And Susan is now confused as well as outraged.
Death and Albert discuss the Auditors and the rules. Death points out that he told Susan not to get involved and they both agree that this means she certainly will (shades of Granny).
Susan decides she needs to fix this, even though she doesn’t know what it is, stops time summons Binky and that’s all for this week.
Pratchettisms
“If I catch you being twee again I will knot your arms behind your head,” Susan said levelly.
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on. (Susan)
“Wherever people are obtuse and absurd . . . and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the Investigative ability of a one legged cockroach . . . and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering . . . yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.” (Susan. Also a play on “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” and one of my favorite comments on belief. Someday I’m going to make a Christmas card with it.)
If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope it was an olive. (Susan re Biers)
“No, No, No!” said Albert. “You got to put a bit of life in it, sir, no offense intended. It’s got to be a big fat laugh. You got to . . . you got to sound like you’re pissing brandy and crapping plum pudding.”
When Mrs. Gaiter had tremulously asked how one addressed the second cousin of the queen, Susan had replied without thinking, “We called him Jamie, usually,” and Mrs. Gaiter had had to go and have a headache in her room.
You could go out into the world, succeed on your own terms, and sooner or later some embarrassing old relative was bound to turn up. (Susan)
There is a UK TV adaptation of Hogfather which is quite well done, and very well cast. It is possibly a bit too faithful to the book, which makes the pacing a bit awkward, but ts worth watching.
There are a lot of things adults don’t believe in that are real in this book; Susan goes chasing after her foster-grandfather only after dealing with several of them, with only as much brutality as is needed. (I love the way she steps on Gawain for generating a perfectly harmless bear just so she’ll have to thump it — which the bears have learned to avoid.) I have this probably-wrong recollection that at some point in her job she snatches something(one?) out from under a bed and tells it to get back in the closet where it belongs; I don’t think Pratchett would have done anything so misconstruable, but I like thinking of Susan as someone who puts “monsters” in their proper places rather than always thrashing them.
Again, Pratchett starts out with fistsful of mots while he’s getting the story going. A few not mentioned by our host:
…one of the ways that he saw things differently from other people was in seeing other people as things… Not cute like a lot of his lines, but very Pratchett.
If they got the hang of the playground, she thought, adult life would hold no fears. Besides, it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying. A couple of zingers for the aren’t-children-cute school; also makes me wonder whether “Skip a Rope” was heard in England.
Naming the bogeyman Susan has to deal with twice “Shlimazel” is cute, but a little off; he’s definitely spilling soup rather than having it spilled on him — it’s not as if someone told him the Gaiters’ was a great place to haunt.
@0: or one could quote the line about “Octoberfest in August“.
@2: maybe you could articulate some of what turns you off? I don’t know that I’d call this (or any other single book) Pratchett’s very best work, but I’m definitely enjoying the reread; as usual, he takes so many usual things and sets them at interestingly unusual angles.
@@.-@: I don’t know whether I still have the DVD of Hogfather, but I’ve definitely seen it — including Pratchett having a closing cameo as a toy-shop owner. I remember the rest of it fondly also.
@@.-@ – I also highly recommend it. I will forever think of Michelle Dockery as Susan. And Terry Pratchett has a cameo as the as the toymaker.
My favorite of Pratchett’s books (and that’s saying something).
I will add that the best riff on “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” was done in the old Pogo comic strip.
One of the characters, a bear, has become irrationally convinced that his home state of Virginia has been kidnapped (?) by Russians. The bear has dressed up as Santa Claus because Christmas is approaching and he wants to deliver presents.
He begins sobbing loudly at the purported loss of his home state, whereat one of the other characters (Howland Owl) bets him a large sausage that in fact Virginia is still part of the USA. The owl accepts, and steps outside the room for a moment, and comes back in with a letter that he himself has just written.
He reads it to the bear: “Yes, Santa Claus, there is a Virginia.”
The owl remarks, “I guess that reduces the argument to a miserable absurdity.”
The bear responds, “I figured that out, so while you was forging that, I ate the sausage.”
I really look forward to the rest of this book, and am finding my own copy to read along.
Barbara Kingsolver described Christmas as a time of songs about “a Palestinian miracle birth, a kindly Turkish saint who the Dutch dressed in a red suit, and a Druidic ceremonial tree.” Hogswatch apparently bypasses the miracle birth while combining the older and newer elements of Christmas.
The Gaiter childrens’ former governess threatened them with monsters inflicting punishment for many perceived misdeeds…including writing with one’s left hand. It sounds like at least one of them is left-handed and was being punished for an inborn trait. Awful and believable.
“Real children don’t go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs.” I’ve gone hoppity-skip as a child when I was definitely not on drugs. Does this mean I’m not real? *considers having an existential crisis, and decides against it*
I *love* the scene where Death strides across the abyssal seabed and takes the soul of a tubeworm at a hydrothermal vent. In our world, hydrothermal vents sometimes look like this (the “black smoker” variety) and sometimes host these creatures. The tubeworms famously associated with these vents don’t look anything like flowers to me, and can be quite large, so I picture the Discworld one looking more like our “sea dandelions,” though a sea dandelion is a colony of small creatures who would probably have individual souls…interesting thought.
Pratchettisms:
‘It was a quiet, black nightmare world, but life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can’t, this takes a little longer.’ [That whole scene is one beautiful Pratchettism.]
‘Biers was where the undead drank, and when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn’t mix a metaphor.’
‘In fact, the [Campaign for Equal Heights] now had to spend so much time explaining to people that they hadn’t got enough rights that they barely had any time left to fight for them.‘
Looking back:
Death gives one child a toy Omnian Inquisition torture chamber. Omnianism may currently be known more for pamphlet proselytizing than physical torture, but its history has apparently not been forgotten.
Another child gets a Capfain Carrot One-Man Night Watch action figure.
Looking ahead:
Susan has told the children that “exaggerated lisping is a hanging offense.” If it was, there would be trouble in Uberwald.
I wonder what was eventually done with all of the pure gold the Auditors paid the Assassins.
Teatime insisting on being called Mr. “Teh-ah-tim-eh” reminds me of Mrs. Earwig insisting on being called Mrs. “Ah-widge.”
If sin is rooted in thinking of people as things, as we’ll be told, I’d think Teatime isn’t so unique in that regard. He does take it to an extreme.
There’s a reference to Twyla’s drawings, long before we see the world that echoes them.
Susan has taught the children that the poker only kills monsters…all kinds of monsters…
@8
Teh-ah-tim-eh also hearks back to the great English tradition of pronouncing names significantly different to how they are spelled, often for comic effect, a classic one being Mrs Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”) on Keeping Up Appearances.
See also the d’Eath family later.
A friend always insisted she lived in “Crewshand darling” with an exaggerated French accent, instead of the actual Crouch End. Gentrification y’see.
@5 “If they got the hang of the playground, she thought, adult life would hold no fears. Besides, it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying. A couple of zingers for the aren’t-children-cute school; also makes me wonder whether “Skip a Rope” was heard in England.”
If English (or indeed any British) people want to think about just how much children are definitely not cute, we have “The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren” by Iona and Peter Opie from 1959. Children are monsters, and that book documents it. The maps in the book are fascinating, showing regionalisation of playground slang terms in the UK.
@8 I imagine the wisdom of writing with your left hand depends on the ink you have available. And perhaps the ease with which said ink can be removed from shirtsleeves.
I think my own favourite quote would be: “‘You meant to tread on that crack so that I’d have to thump some poor creature whose only fault is wanting to tear you limb from limb.”
@8 @11 – (One of the reasons I love this book club is the tangents.)
Most right-handed writers think of the ink smearing problem. But my dad, who was left-handed in the days of non-smearing ink, said his main problem was that his hand hid what he had written.
I don’t know how much smearing is a problem on parchment but I wonder if cultures with left to right writing, like Hebrew, have a greater prevalence of left-handedness?
@8: Omnianism may currently be known more for pamphlet proselytizing than physical torture, but its history has apparently not been forgotten. Why should it be? Back when I was going through amusement park fun houses, I saw far more Iron Maidens than were ever constructed IRL. And there’s a “collection” of machines replicating torture in very miniature at the House on the Rock, as if there were an industry of remembering our ancestors’ worst individual violences.
and Susan has told the children that “exaggerated lisping is a hanging offense.” If it was, there would be trouble in Uberwald. How much is Uberwald lisping exaggerated? Costume fangs certainly mess up diction; do lisps around real ones come and go, like Eyegor’s hump in Young Frankenstein? Also, ISTM the rules for people with dental issues would be different from those for children putting on an accent from scratch. (I wonder whether this may have been a bit personal; Pratchett had the rhotic-‘r’-sounding-like-‘ww’ accent that’s sometimes called a lisp.)
various re handwriting: I was taught to tilt the paper enough that my hand didn’t smear the ink or hide the writing; that the graphology texts I’ve seen say back-leaning script is a sign of untrustworthiness (without asking what hand is used) is one of things that make me call it a pseudo-science.
@0, re gleaning answers: ISTM there’s more elision generally, e.g. Teatime punches the biggest thief in the face, and in their next scene the bruiser is carrying a girl in a sack. Pratchett is leaving out what lesser writers would spell out or even belabor.
> a riff on “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Oh boy, if Pterry was around and so inclined, he could just slaughter it with the beliefs we’re being sold wholesale.
Someone should do something about it.
@13 et al. – Lisping
No one in Uberwald lisps by nature. Igors (and Igorinas) do it for effect but can turn it on and off. The same is true for vampires. We’ve already seen this in the Dragon King of Arms and Igor at Biers. Susan making it a hanging offense, especially for children trying to be twee, seems reasonable.
Well, time to be “that guy”—
The evidence is that the Christmas tree only dates back to the sixteenth century or so, and has nothing to do with any pagan custom. Also, the iron maiden appears to be a modern hoax.
Right. Igors and Igorinas choose to engage in *exaggerated* lisping as part of their culturally-backed personas, like twee children but possibly with more saliva-spraying, and wouldn’t take kindly to it being made a hanging offense.
@16 – Well, time to be that guy’s guy.
A decorated tree itself is a new tradition, but the use of evergreen decorations was, like most Christmas traditions, part of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. The church took over the Roman holiday to capitalize on its popularity throughout the Empire despite contradictions with the gospel stories (e.g. shepherds watch their flocks by night in the spring when ewes are giving birth).
Ernie gives a small rant about his great-grandfather’s tales of growing up on the Unreal Estate, the wizard’s dumping ground (and possible former site of the Mage Wars) where weird and often dangerous magics were part of daily life. I might have liked to spend more page-time with people inhabiting that intereststing area.
I enjoy the Death of Rats being referred to as the Grim Squeaker. I enjoy everything about the Death of Rats, especially in this section.
@13: I don’t think Omnian torture should have been forgotten on the Disc, but I pointed out the toy as a callback to an earlier book.
@@@@@#18: I’d argue that as well; according to e.g. this link, there is almost no connection between Saturnalia and Christmas. (Apologies to everyone for the derail—I’ll try to stick to the topic if I post any more comments!)
@20 – What’s the fun in staying on topic?
Thank you for the excellent article. I must admit that my knowledge is from the Roman side of things.
There’s also a distinction to be made between the celebration of Christmas, in the church sense (which was basically nothing until a specific liturgy was declared in the 9th century) and the celebration of the winter solstice by the common people (which dates back as a formal celebration to Saturnalia or earlier). Winter solstice celebrations, informal and local, were common across Europe until it was merged with Christmas celebrations in the 15th and 16th centuries.
@8 – the punishing kids for writing with their left hands is straight from reality. Both my father and grandfather were hit by teachers and had their left hands tied behind their backs in school as kid (1920s & 50s, Midwest USA).
Thanks to Albert, “Bum” has been my go-to swearword all week.
“Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.” (Susan)
I disagree that this has to do with money spent on education. In the UK, you only start paying back student loans when your income exceeds a threshold (and it’s quite a generous one) – so no one who’s got student debt is hampered by it. For most of the years when Pratchett might have gone to university, it would have been paid for by the government, and the small groups of people who worry about student debt usually don’t know how it works.
I think the point of Susan’s reflection relates to how being ‘educated’ cuts you off from much of the world. Despite all of Susan’s advantages, she’s left with no choice but to be a governess, because the nature of being in the educated class cuts her off from excellent jobs like lorry driving, plumbing – all sorts of trade. It resonates with Pratchett’s observations about how being a gentleman/woman means not being able to earn money by working. So learning, which is intended to integrate you with the world, becomes a social force that separates you from it.
@18 I don’t particularly have a dog in the fight, but there’s at least one longstanding, widely raised regional breed of sheep, the Awassi, whose lambing season is November-December.
“In Iraq, the principal lambing season of Awassi ewes is in November, and in Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Israel in December-January.”
https://www.fao.org/3/p8550e/P8550E01.htm
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