The Fiery Festive Game of Snap-dragon

 Nothing says we like to party like thrusting your hand into a plate of burning alcohol to snatch a piece of fruit or a nut and pop it in your mouth without getting burned. And that's just what some Victorian families did at this time of year, even the kids!

Snap-dragon, or Flap-dragon, is a parlor game that came into being in the 16th century. The game was usually played on Christmas Eve, and also on Halloween by some counts! You'd take a shallow bowl, drop in some raisins, almonds, grapes, or figs, pour in some brandy, light it up and see who can eat the most treats...presumably with the least amount of bodily harm. And kids today will complain when their phone battery runs out. Ha! 

 

Using a liquor around 50% proof creates blue flames which give off a lot of light but doesn't burn as hot as your average candle. An 18th century writer even said of the blue fire "the wantonness of the thing was to see each other look like a demon, as we burnt ourselves, and snatched out the fruit". That sort of ties the game into the tradition of telling Christmas ghost stories and would probably be a fun way to wrap up your Halloween night.

 

Here's a short video that explains a little more of the history and gives a demonstration.

If you decided to give Snap-dragon a whirl this year, please read up on it and take the necessary precautions for playing with fire in your house.

Have a great holiday!

A Pair of Creepmas Reads

Here's a couple of books I read recently to help put the creep in your Creepmas. Clicking on the covers will take you to an Amazon affiliated link, where you can get the book and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

First up is the newest from Ben Farthing's "I Found" horror series. I mentioned the first two of this series in my Halloween Reading List and loved them both. This one is just as good and it has the added bonus of being a Christmas horror. And like the others, it's a quick read at only 126 pages. Perfect for Christmas Eve by the fireplace.

After last year’s tragedy, Douglas’ parents are ignoring Christmas.
But when Douglas finds an eerie strand of lights slithering through the sewer, he unwittingly unleashes merry terror upon his neighborhood’s tacky lights contest. String lights spread like invasive kudzu, turning festive decorations into surreal, predatory nightmares. Determined not to lose both Christmas and his family forever, Douglas gathers his courage to confront the source of the holiday horror: deep in the concrete pipes beneath the street.

 

While Krampus has started getting a foothold in the US over the past few years, things are generally bright and cheery here in the month of December. Europe, on the other hand, has some darker characters associated with this time of year. The next book is a guidebook to these festive frighteners.

 

 

It features 24 entities across Europe and Denmark, with each one having a danger rating, a couple paragraphs and a wicked illustration that might inspire something other than sugarplums dancing in your head at night.

While it doesn't go into too much detail, I think it's a good way to briefly learn about these stories and possibly find some (or all!) that intrigue you enough to dig into them more. It's also absolutely worth it for the illustrations!

Plunderlong 8-Ball Figure

 It has been so long since the Plunderlong/Plnuderstrong Kickstarter ended that I forgot which figure I had picked! This guy washed up on my doorstep last week.

In addition to 8-Ball, I also order the "Leather Crate" which probably sounds a lot more kinky than it is. The figure also came with this cool (and heavy!) two-sided golden coin. Let's bust him out!

8-Ball comes with two bundles of dynamite, two sets of hands, three heads, a helmet, and a torch. I had some trouble swapping the heads and had to put him under a hair dryer for a bit. To be fair, Lone Coconut had mentioned this in a project update. Now that I've gotten off the head he shipped with, I'm a little shy about fully plugging one on there in case it gets stuck. It doesn't seem to make much difference if the head rests on the neck and you'd only notice it if you were moving the figure around.