Think about Christmas festivities, and you likely picture halcyon images of mangers, glowing fireplaces, sweet carolers, and snow-blanketed hills. But behind all this bright magic, there’s something much darker lurking in the shadows. In The Dead of Winter, Cambridge-trained historian Sarah Clegg delves deep into the folklore of the Christmas season in Europe, detailing the way its terrifying and often debaucherous past continues to haunt and entertain us now in the twenty-first century.

Traveling across Europe to attend these dark festivals, Clegg captures the wild revelry at the heart of the winter madness: the hideous masks and curling horns of “Krampus runs” in Austria, the fearsome horseheads of “hoodenings” in Southeast England, and the candle-crowned young witches of the Nordic St. Lucy Festival.

Perfect for the growing mainstream audience obsessed with horror and monsters—as well as the current cultural excitement for folklore-based retellings and books about witchcraft—this guide makes the perfect gift, beautifully packaged in a stocking-stuffer-friendly trim size. The closer we get to the dark magic and bright enchantment captured in The Dead of Winter, the more we see how it might be fun to let just a little bit of ancient darkness into the often saccharine season of lights.