Caroline: Father Christmas, Santa Klaus, Jolly Old Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Père Noël, Sinterklaas — many different cultures and traditions celebrate the story of a cheerful old man with a flowing white beard and a red outfit, who visits the children of the world in December to distribute gifts. In most of these tales, he is everything that is merry and good, representing our best impulses to think of others and bring some brightness into their lives.
But the figure of Father Christmas can be turned to more sinister ends, too, as the writers of golden age detective fiction delighted in demonstrating. Their novels are full of murderers, imposters, thieves and blackmailers, all decked out in the recognisable attire, ready to slip unnoticed through festive celebrations. What better way could there be to mingle among innocent revellers and get away with murder?
Today, we’re not going to let these malefactors blend so perfectly into the background. We’re going to take a closer look at the mysterious potential of Father Christmas.
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Welcome to Shedunnit. I’m Caroline Crampton.
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One of my favourite things to do at this time of year is go for a walk just when twilight is shifting properly into the darkness of evening. Which in northern England in December, occurs at about 4pm. People are just beginning to arrive home from school and work, and as they do they turn on their lamps and Christmas lights, but don’t usually draw the curtains or blinds immediately because it isn’t quite pitch black outside yet. Walking along the street, I can see these lighted windows glow golden in the dark housefronts, the shadows outside somehow deeper and more inky because of the contrast with the light within. It gives me a special kind of seasonal joy to see these windows lined up like the doors in an advent calendar, and know that behind each is a different world and a different story. And soon, when I’m done being cold out here in the dark, I will go into my own house and create my own cosy little lighted tableau in my turn.
This is the image I reach for when I consider the enormous popularity of both Christmas ghost stories and murder mysteries. Both forms have a long and storied connection with the festive season, from the work of M.R. James to the tradition of a “Christie to Christmas”. Just as the period between the first and second world wars was a prolific period for crime fiction, it was also a point at which the concepts of “Christmas” and “murder mystery” grew even more closely connected. Pretty much every writer of golden age detective fiction who published more than half a dozen books eventually tried their hand at a festive mystery of some kind, either novel length or in a short story. Most of them wrote several, or indeed many.
And I’m part of this grand tradition now, myself. This is my fifth Christmas-related episode of Shedunnit. I’ve covered different aspects of this combination in episodes titled “Crime at Christmas”, “Let It Snow”, “A Christie for Christmas”, and “The Murderless Christmas Mystery”. The fact that I still have more to say about this tells you just how extensive the connection between murder mysteries and Christmas is. And how much listeners enjoy a festive episode, of course.
The cosiness of Christmas invites crime stories in the same way that those lighted windows seem so much more attractive when viewed from the dark outside. Christmas is, in popular culture at least, a time of joy and cheer when people are nice to each other and there are sparkly things everywhere. To appreciate just how joyful and sparkly it is, though, we need the contrast: that little pool of shadow that makes the light seem so much brighter by comparison. It’s the frosty air outside that makes the fire inside feel warmer, or the grey weeks of early to mid December that give the festive season some extra glitz and glamour just by being so dreary and chilly. A spooky story of ghosts or murder, when consumed amid cosy Christmas cheer, provides just enough of a shiver to add a certain festive piquancy to the atmosphere. It’s why soap opera Christmas special always have the biggest betrayals and the twistiest twists. In Albert Square or Emmerdale, it’s not truly Christmas unless a favourite character has been dramatically served with divorce papers or a community’s beloved pub has burned down.
Christmas comprises so many recognisable traditions that are perfect for weaving into a mystery plot. There’s the food: Sherlock Holmes memorably unraveled a crime involving a Christmas goose in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” from 1892, and a ruby comes tumbling out of a serving of plum pudding in Agatha Christie’s 1960 short story “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding”. Party games can be turned to evil ends, as Dorothy L. Sayers showed in her short story “The Necklace of Pearls”. Christmas is a time when friends and families gather, even those who don’t get on very well — Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, C.H.B. Kitchin’s Crime at Christmas and Anne Meredith’s Portrait of a Murderer are all excellent examples of how wrong the cosy Christmas reunion can go. The combination of forced Christmas cheer and bad weather can neatly isolate suspects and victims, as demonstrated by Cyril Hare’s An English Murder and Gladys Mitchell’s Groaning Spinney, among many others. Snow is a character all of its own in some of these books: The Case of the Abominable Snowman by Nicholas Blake and Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon in particular spring to mind as novels where the weather is an important complicating factor in a Christmas mystery.
There is one tradition that seems to have fascinated the writers of golden age detective fiction more than any other, though. Having someone dressed up as Father Christmas is a familiar part of festive celebrations — as part of a costume party, at a public place like a department store, or at home to entertain children. That familiarity is a big part of what makes this such a perfect way to introduce a mystery plot, though. A Father Christmas is such an expected part of festive celebrations that nobody will even blink even if one turns up unannounced. Everyone will just assume that someone else arranged the visit as a surprise, even while a total stranger is being welcomed in with no questions asked.
It’s the perfect disguise in other ways, too. The costume is so all-encompassing, with the red suit, padding, beard and hat, that it’s hard to see any distinguishing features at all of the person wearing it underneath. Adults tend to “play along” with the disguise too, not wanting to ruin the illusion that Father Christmas has actually come calling for any children present, and so are deliberately not looking too closely at the quote “real” person beneath the garments. And Father Christmas is such a traditionally benign presence that it will not immediately register that a dangerous intruder is about if someone in that attire is found hanging around before or after an appearance. They’re just getting ready to make a child’s day! They couldn’t possibly be up to anything bad. They’re Father Christmas, or at least dressed as him. Being in disguise as Father Christmas can visually provide a good excuse to be somewhere that would otherwise attract attention — there’s a short story I like, “A Present from Santa Claus” by Julian Symons, that executes this very well in relation to a department store.
Symbols have incredible power, even in the cynical light of the twentieth century. Because Father Christmas is described in countless stories and songs as a wise, gentle, generous, amiable old man, we tend to unconsciously attribute those characteristics to any figure in that costume, with no evidence at all. Everyone is off their guard around Father Christmas. The shine might have slightly come off this effect for those of us today who have had the misfortune to be in a major city during an event like SantaCon, when thousands of drunk people dressed as Father Christmas make a public nuisance of themselves on the streets, but I think the golden age of detective fiction had yet to see such a sight.
Very importantly, Father Christmas has a very distinctive and individual outfit that is replicated everywhere with few alterations. It makes people in this costume interchangeable on a casual glance, allowing for all sorts of crime fiction shenanigans with multiple malefactors passing through a place undetected, in the guise of a single jolly old saint nick. As you’ll hear shortly, plenty of writers had fun with this aspect of the trope, causing many Father Christmases to mill about in their books as witnesses, red herrings, murderers and more. It’s an excellent seasonal way to mislead the reader, if having a Father Christmas who was definitely spotted at the scene of the crime turns out not to be such a clear-cut clue after all.
The last reason why I think detective novelists were so fond of putting Father Christmas in their mysteries is less practical and more about what the character represents. As this spirit of generosity and good cheer, Father Christmas is an excellent device for highlighting the opposite traits in an unpleasant character. Miserliness and grumpiness are shown in stark relief when the bearer of these traits is required to don the red velvet suit and the big white beard. I think this is partly why we get such a concentration of Father Christmas plot elements in inheritance mysteries set at Christmas – it’s an excellent way of highlighting heightened tension around the giving and receiving of wealth and goods.
After the break: Father Christmas runs amok.
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Father Christmas is perfect for use in detective fiction — we have established this. Now I want to delve more deeply into the different ways he can be used. A forensic investigation, if you will, of this most festive of tropes.
Before we started researching this, I was certain that the most common way Father Christmas would be included in a mystery plot was as a disguise for a burglar. It just makes sense, doesn’t it? Donning a Father Christmas costume and sneaking around a house filling up a sack during the season of peace and goodwill makes both practical and narrative sense. But I was surprised. Although there are definitely plenty of instances like this, as you will hear shortly, the most frequently occurring that we found was actually where the victim of a crime, rather than its perpetrator, is dressed as Father Christmas. Specifically, the victim of a murder. Nothing could illustrate that idea of making Christmas cosy via unpleasant contrast better.
In 1934, the French author Pierre Véry published a novel titled L’Assassinat du Père Noël, or The Murder of Father Christmas, which is a title that really gets straight to the point and promises great things. I was able to read this book in a translation by Alan Grimes that was published in 2008, and unfortunately it is not quite as directly Father Christmas murder related as you might expect. Set in a rural French village in the run up to Christmas, there is first a performance of a Christmas pageant and then a robbery, before not one but two murder victims are discovered, having died while wearing the costume. But the book reads more like a satire of a detective novel that a straightforward mystery, and it feels like it underdelivers on the magnificent promise of the title.
Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer is a much more satisfying example, I think. Published in 1944, it was written by an actor named Algernon Vernon Mills, using the penname of Rupert Latimer, and republished as part of the British Library Crime Classics series in 2021. In this one, the author really seems to be ticking things off on an imaginary list of the most recognisable Christmas mystery tropes — we get a family in the English countryside preparing for Christmas, heavy snow, much focus on the purchase and distribution of gifts, a snowman, and plenty of Christmas food like mince pies and chocolates that may or may not be poisoned. To add to that, there is an objectionable but rich elderly relative, Uncle Willie, whose fortune comes with a complicated inheritance situation, and multiple instances of people dressing up as Father Christmas. The climactic point of the book occurs when a body dressed in a Father Christmas costume is discovered inside a snowman — a collision of tropes so intense that it borders on parody, and which is prevented from becoming overkill only by the lightness of Latimer’s prose. This great moment of festive discovery is one of the best of its kind, and really nails that cosy/criminal contrast I keep talking about. Here’s how Latimer does it:
“The wintery morning sun came out and shone for a few fitful moments on the gleaming chunks of snow that lay scattered at her feet; and also on what looked like a vast pool of blood. “It’s his Father Christmas costume,” observed Rhoda reassuringly. The remark fell flatly on her shivering listeners.”
It’s ok everyone — someone is dead, but the red on the snow is the velvet of the Father Christmas costume they donned to amuse children, not blood. I’m sure we are all reassured by that!
I must include a few honorable mentions for instances of the best murdered Father Christmas. One must go to Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan from 1949, in which the murder victim physically resembles the North Pole’s most famous resident as well as being dressed as him, and is discovered nestled among the presents under the Christmas tree. A short story by Patricia Moyes from 1980 titled “Who Killed Father Christmas?” is set in a department store’s toy department and sees a substitute Father Christmas murdered in his grotto. That story also provided the title for the British Library’s Christmas anthology in 2023, in case you thought it sounded familiar. And my final honourable mention goes to a hilarious story by Julian Symons called “The Santa Claus Club”. Said club has been formed by ten wealthy men, who meet every year all dressed as Father Christmas to hold a charity raffle and eat a Christmas dinner. As Symons says at the start: “The whole thing was a combination of various English characteristics: enjoyment of dressing up, a wish to help charities, and the desire also that the help given should not go unrecorded.” Of course, with ten Father Christmases on the premises, the odds of one of them turning up dead are rather good.
It is not just murder victims who don the red velvet suit and the white beard. Witnesses can wear them too. In The Santa Claus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay from 1936, a somewhat tense family gathering at a country house is topped off by the discovery, on Christmas Day, of the patriarch lying dead in the grounds having been shot in the head. Just to add some festive cheer to these grim events, though, the person who discovers the body, Oliver Witcombe, does so while dressed as Father Christmas — something that Oliver did not want to do, but had put up with because the murdered man had been keen on it. As an extra kicker, he seems to be the only person in the house party who does not have a motive to want the murdered man dead. The Father Christmas costume itself is also the cause of much drama in this book. First it doesn’t arrive when it is supposed to, and then it is hidden seemingly as a way to cover the murderer’s tracks. It all makes for a very festive muddle, pleasingly resolved at the end.
Father Christmas and his sack, as mentioned, does make an excellent cover for a burglar. In this disguise, a light-fingered criminal can move through a house without attracting attention, and the costume even comes with an accessory designed for carrying loot. Julian Symons in his short story “‘Twixt the Cup and the Lip” credits this idea to a gang of professional thieves, who rather improbably attempt a heist on the Crown Jewels while dressed in Father Christmas outfits. Margery Allingham fares rather better with her short story titled “The Case of the Man with the Sack”, which is focused on a Christmas Eve party at which there is going to be some rather valuable jewellery in attendance. Albert Campion, Allingham’s regular sleuth, is there too, and has an encounter with the disguised burglar himself. We’re told: “He switched off the light and stepped into the corridor, to come face to face with Father Christmas. The boots were glossy, the tunic with its wool border satisfyingly red, while the benevolent mask with its cotton-wool beard was almost lifelike.” And then the burglar spooks at the sight of the detective, and “the figure uttered an inarticulate cry, dropped the sack, which fell with a crash at Mr Campion’s feet, and fled like a shadow.” Who was in the suit? That’s what Campion must find out.
Another innovative use of a Father Christmas figure is as a way of bringing a benign outsider such as a detective into a closed circle of suspects without attracting undue attention. This is done very well in John Dickson Carr’s 1934 novel The White Priory Murders, when Chief Inspector Masters is able to make an unofficial arrival in the area by agreeing to “officiate as Santa Claus at the Christmas festival of the Methodist Junior Children’s League”. And I must just mention a short story called “The Snapdragon and the C.I.D.” by Margery Allingham, which not only contains mention of Albert Campion playing Father Christmas himself, but contains one of my favourite opening lines to a festive mystery. It runs: “Murder under the mistletoe—and the man who must have done it couldn’t have done it. That’s my Christmas and I don’t feel merry, thank you very much all the same.”
That story belongs to a rather heart-warming tradition of good deeds done in detective fiction through the agency of Father Christmas. Allingham strikes again with this in a story called “The Case is Altered”, in which Campion anonymously rescues a young man from a career-ending scrape while at an obnoxiously festive house party, and gifts his solution to the victim with a humorous message of “Merry Christmas. Love from Santa Claus.”
Lastly, I must recommend “Among Those Present was Santa Claus” by Vincent Cornier, a delightful story in which a young man who works as a professional Santa Claus hired out by a London agency ends up turning detective while on a job in the countryside. The party he is attending is held up by burglars, but nobody suspected that the man in the prickly beard would be the one to bring them to justice. Father Christmas can always fly under the radar, whether for good reasons or bad.
So there you have it: a dizzying number of ways in which the inventive brains of detective fiction have turned the role of Father Christmas to mysterious ends. Has any other single element of real life inspired so many different crime stories? I think we have the appetite of readers in the 1920s and 1930s to thank, in part, for the sheer volume of festive detective fiction, and it’s clear that we’re no less fond of them a century on. All that remains is for me to wish you a very happy Christmas from Shedunnit, and to hope that any crimes that you may encounter over the festive period are entirely fictional ones.
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This episode of Shedunnit was written, narrated and produced by me, Caroline Crampton. If you’d like more from the podcast, including extra interviews, behind the scenes commentaries and the chance to read a book each month with a community of other mystery lovers, join the Shedunnit Book Club now at shedunnitbookclub.com.
All the books mentioned in this episode are listed at shedunnitshow.com/fatherchristmas. I publish transcripts of every episode including this one; find them all at shedunnitshow.com/transcripts. There are five other festive episode of Shedunnit in the archive, and you can find all of them linked in the episode description too.
Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece. Production assistance from Leandra Griffith. Member support for the Shedunnit Book Club from CC McLoughlin.
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