A Merry Tudor Christmas with Lucy Worsley

In this agreeable documentary, historian Lucy Worsley takes the viewer on a guided tour through the age of king Henry VIII. (Yes, THAT one.) The tour focuses on the religious and secular festivities surrounding the "Twelve Days of Christmas", which was an extended series of more or less holy days situated around our modern-day Christmas to New Year period. These Twelve Days represented both a spiritual window unto Heaven and a welcome break with the privations and obligations of ordinary life. (One rather gets the idea that the birth rates of England knew an annual spike some nine months later.)

At Court, of course, the pampered elite organized rich masques and feasts, a lot of which must have devolved into rather un-Christian licence. Thanks to Lucy Worsley and her colleagues the viewer discovers some of the costly treats served at Henry's table, such as a fetching chess set made from rosewater-scented marzipan. The Tudors had also organized a happy little exchange of gifts, which mainly consisted of a number of closely-observed and closely-monitored courtiers handing the monarch large amounts of things : dogs, weapons, coins. It turns out that the king received more than he gave in return, which fact won't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the working of a monarchy...

Quite watchable and amusing.