The story comes from Blount’s Fragmenta Antiquitatis (1815) via T F Thiselton Dyrer's British Popular Customs Present and Past (1911) but has no date. William Aislabie, mentioned below was born in 1700 and died in 1781, which puts it in the early- or mid-1700s..
 
I grew up in Hutton Conyers – it's near Ripon. We used to go to Ripon sometimes, when we had lambs to sell, or eggs and honey. My father would talk to the other men and my mother and I would go to buy fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she would buy me a little sweet pastry if I was good. My father told me about the Hornblower, who blew his horn at nine o clock at night at all four corners of the obelisk. Sometimes I would pretend to be the man blowing his horn, but that meant I didn't always get the pastry, though sometimes I swear I saw my father laughing and my mother telling him off. Those days he would give me a sweet from his pocket, so I wasn't too sad
 
We lived in a cottage with a garden where my mother raised hens and had her beehives and apple trees. I loved watching the bees on sunny summer afternoons, until my mother chased me indoors to do my spelling or help her make the bread.
 
William Aislabie was lord of the soil – that always sounded like he needed a wash to me – and my father and other men in the village kept their sheep on Hutton Conyers Moor. My father was the shepherd for the township of Hutton Conyers, and he looked out for all of the sheep. I knew the days when he'd had to move the sheep because the lord's shepherd demanded the best bits of grass, because he would come home cross and wouldn't play with me.  
 
On the first day of the year, my mother made a big apple pie from the apples stored in the cellar and a peck of flour, and my father took this to the bailiff, along with a two penny sweetcake he bought from the market. He had to take a wooden spoon as well. I didn't understand why until one day he agreed to take me along, provided I was as quiet as the little mice that live in the outhouse.
 
We got to the bailiff's house, and my father needn't have worried about me being quiet – I was too scared to say a word. There were the shepherds I knew from the moors, and the lord and the bailiff and steward looking tall and stern. I sat quiet in a corner and watched my father take up his pie and cake. It was as big as our oven, about 18 inches across, and the bailiff measured it with his rule.
 
He said that he would return it and fine the town if it wasn't big enough. I must have looked scared, because my father looked at me and winked. The bailiff cut it into four parts – one for the steward, one for the tenant of the coneywarren, and the rest cut into six, one piece for each shepherd. My father always brought the pieces home for my mother and I, and my favourite was the one that had an inner pie all filled with prunes, from the the shepherd of Rainton.
 
The sweetcakes were cut up just the same, and then the bailiff brought out an earthen pot of furmenty and a little bowl of mustard. You don't know what furmenty is? It's a porridge of wheat boiled up with broth, and it's tasty on a cold day.
 
The bailiff mixed mustard in, and took the pot outside, into his garth, and gave each shepherd a slice of cheese and a penny roll. The steward took a large spoonful, then the tenant of the warren, and then my father was the first shepherd to take a spoonful, using his own wooden spoon. My father told me that eating the furmenty showed that he was loyal to the lord. The last shepherd told the bailiff that he had forgotten his spoon to eat the furmenty, and I was worried and I asked what would happen to him. My father laughed and put me up on my shoulders so I could see. The bailiff’s face was cross, and then I realised that he was pretending, and was actually trying not to smile. The other shepherds made the man without a spoon lay down on the ground and eat out of the pot. He looked so funny when he stood up, yellow furmenty all over his face.
 
Everyone had a glass of ale and drank the health of the lord of the manor, and then we went back into the bailiff's house. I was so tired that father carried me all the way home, wrapped up tight in a blanket against the cold wind. 

The North Star, Monday 27 December 1886 and other sources
 
It was Christmas Day yesterday, and we had such a treat. We went into the chapel for the service in the morning, and it was so pretty. Holly on the walls and pews, and a cross of Christmas berries over the communion table. I can’t make out the words, but my friend read them to me – Emmanuel, God with us, they said. We had cake and hot sweet tea afterwards, which was grand.
 
We had us dinner, at two. We had roast beef with baked and boiled potatoes, and a pint of beer, which was a gift from the Landlord of the Schooner Inn. And there was plum pudding as well. The lady who works in the kitchen, who sometimes comes to talk to me, said that the puddings were made with 35 pounds of currents, 20 pounds of raisins, 21 pounds of sugar and 30 eggs. I would have liked to see them stir and boil that.
 
The dining hall was full of decorations made out of bright coloured paper. All the men got an ounce of tobacco, and the old ladies got snuff. I got tea and an orange – it smelled like foreign places and spices – and the children got sweets and nuts. My Nancy’s face was a picture.
 
In the evening, we saw a magic lantern display, which was so clever and so merry, and the old men sang songs. There was cake too, but I was so full I couldn’t eat another thing.

Dates back to the 17th century or earlier
 
Back when I was a little girl, I played hide and seek in the marketplace, running around the stalls full of oranges and vegetables and birds and rabbits for the Christmas table. I peered out between the tables, looking for my brother, and I saw a ghost. It had a white horse’s skull with black eyes, and it floated in the air, and there were huntsmen, shouting and laughing and singing. There was a fiddle and a fife and a drum. The ghost chased people and then fell to the ground. The men played their hunting horns and he jumped back up. The ghost saw me and snapped his jaws, and I screamed so loudly that my brother came running. I had nightmares all through that Christmas, and my mama came every night to comfort me. My papa explained that it wasn’t real, but the bad dreams still came. So, he took me to meet the man who played the Poor Old Hoss. He showed me the skull, with black glass in its eye sockets, and the black cloak that made it look like it was floating in the dark. He let me hold the pole that supported the skull and showed me how to make its jaws open and shut. He told me that they sang the story of the horse, from his birth, then growing up, getting old and dying, then coming back to life, like the year getting to its end and then starting again.
 
My nightmares stopped, but I still don't really like horses.
 

​On the darkest day of the year, we visit the stones on the moor.
 
My father told me the same story every year, that the men of the tribe, led by my father’s father, put the stones up. My father lit the winter fires on the day that the shadows lined up. Now my father is gone, and he had no son, tonight I will be the one to tell the story and light the fire that brings the sun back.

The old stable was quiet that late Christmas eve night. There was the sheep that had lambed the night before, far too early, asleep in the straw with her skinny and startlingly white twins. The old horse dozing and snuffling gently, occasionally shifting a foot. A couple of half tame farm cats slumbering in the wall-mounted hay rack. And me.

Now that had been a row. Fuelled by the presence of the flaming elf on the shelf, the lack of the Christmas Eve box that "everyone has got, Daddy", the fact that the shop had run out of Brussels sprouts and I should have gone earlier when I was asked, and all the other irritations and tirednesses and not meeting expectations that come along with Christmas, I just exploded. And, so, instead of being lovely-and-cuddly-Christmas-jumper-wearing-reading-stories-in-front-of-the-fire-and hanging-up-the-stockings-Dad, I was in-a-flaming-temper-and-storming-away-from-crying-children-and-hiding-in-the-stable-Dad. And yes, I know, it's not big and not clever and not fair. And I felt horrible. But I knew I couldn't go back in. Not yet. That would show that I was wrong and I wasn't. Well, I didn't think I was. Or was I? Oh, I don't know.

I must have fallen asleep. That's the only way I can explain it. And there must have been a power cut. Because when I opened my eyes the stable was colder and darker, and the light was no longer streaming in from the yard. I sat up; all of a sudden, I'd stopped being grumpy-dad and turned into worried-about-Marion-and-the-kids-dad. I reached into my pocket for my phone, ready to turn the torch on. But it wasn't there. And neither were my trousers. Instead I was wearing some kind of rough fabric tunic, tied round my waist with a piece of cord. I looked out into the yard in the cold light of the moon, and it was my yard but it wasn't. The gates and walls were there but the house was smaller, rougher, more like a hut, and the windows glowed in a soft yellow flickering light, not the harshness of electric bulbs.

I sat back down, abruptly, and that's when I saw her. A girl, she couldn't have been more than 20, holding a baby wrapped up in linen. There were still streaks of blood on his tiny wrinkled face, and she tenderly wiped them away with her thumb. I smelled the tang of blood and shit and sweat and earth and damp straw. The smell of birth. A man was with her, and he looked down with such love and grief at the two faces, one sweat-stained and exhausted and joyful, the other small and perfect and sleeping. I could see the tears on his cheeks and in his beard, glinting in the moonlight.

I looked around, and I swore the sheep and her lambs, and the horse, were watching the figures. Even the cats' eyes glinted green in the darkness. At the door, silhouetted against the frosted cobbles, there was a goat and a cow peering in, and between their hooves there were mice, rats and rabbits, a dove and a couple of hens. The only sound was the purring of the cats.

I stood up suddenly, and hit my head hard on the hay rack. The world flashed white, and the last thing I remember, before tumbling unceremoniously into the straw, was all those sets of eyes looking at me and the sweet sleepy smile of the girl. And then dark.

The cold woke me up this time, and the light – a sharp bright morning, full of frost and sun and farm noises. I was laying in the straw next to the sheep and her twins. I rubbed my head. No bruise. Checked my pockets. There was my phone. And no girl or baby or goats. Just my wife's voice.

"Morning sweetheart," she said. "Assumed that you'd fallen asleep after lambing her – it must have been after two that you came out. She looks fine – daft old girl."

"It's not… Christmas morning… what…"

"You're still asleep – it's Christmas eve, you daft old farmer. Did you have a nip of something to keep the cold out? There's a brew on in the kitchen." She started to walk back to the farm house, and then turned back, a touch of exasperation. "I don't suppose you…"

She sighed.

"Well, we'll just have to…"

The sprouts! And if it was Christmas eve… that was the weirdest dream.

"I'll nip out to the farm shop first," I said, standing up and shaking the straw out of my jumper. Graeme's still got some Brussels, I think. And if not, he can share his. He owes us for letting his tup out early and getting the old girl here up the duff. And how about I get the girls something for Christmas Eve. A book or a game or something? They've actually been quite good, I suppose."

I grinned. And she grinned back. A real grin, rather than the strained smile I've seen a lot lately. As I turned towards the stable door, something white caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up. It was a scrap of white linen, with the fleeting smell of new life. Sometimes, we do get a fresh start. However unlikely it seems.

It was a cold night, that Christmas eve night, as we walked back from the pub. Warmed from the fire and the food and the beer, we hunkered down inside hats and scarves and coats and boots, trying to hold onto the heat as we stepped out of the door. Every surface glittered like diamonds, reflecting the chill light of the distant stars. Behind the long snaking dry stone walls, sheep huddled together, and the night was so still and quiet we could hear them breathing. The hills rose up either side of us, crisp white with snow and bathed in the cold light of the full moon. Etched with the blue-black shadows of the winter trees and the footsteps of the fox.

As we dropped down into the village, the windows of the church glowed with the flickering gold of candlelight and the warmth of centuries-old stained glass. Around the edges of the door leaked light and sound, the sweet melancholy of In the Bleak Midwinter and the quiet rumble of prayer.
​
Tiny white and blue lights edged the trees, lighting our way as we walked through the streets, our footsteps muffled and creaking in the snow that had only stopped falling a few hours before. We tiptoed into the house, not wanting to break the mood of stillness, and stayed silent, arms around each other, bathed in the glow of the damped down fire and the lights of the tree. And as we stood there, the church bells pealed Christmas through the cold night air.