The Great Discworld Retrospective No. 20: Hogfather

Christmas stories are a comparatively recent phenomenon in literature (Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, less than 200 years ago) but Christmas as we know it today can probably be dated to a similar age: frankly, if we hadn’t had the Victorians and their fascination with cards, trees and carols, Christmas might not be as important to us as it is now. Obviously, the idea of Christmas goes back almost two thousand years, but how it gets celebrated has changed dramatically since then. However, A Christmas Carol pretty much froze in time a lot of the ideas we have about what Christmas looks like, as well as what it means to us.

This is one of the themes of Hogfather, the twentieth Discworld novel. It takes place on Hogswatch Eve, the Discworld version of Christmas Eve, when children go to bed, eagerly awaiting for morning to come so they can see what gifts the Hogfather has left them in their stockings (or pillowslips).

In this novel, Death has to take the place of the Hogfather, who has been rendered intangible because the Auditors Of Reality (last seen in Reaper Man) have decided that there is too much imagination and fantasy in the world, and have employed an assassin to take out the Hogfather and destroy children’s belief in wonder and magic, making them more susceptible to Reality.

But Death isn’t working by himself: he has inveigled his manservant Albert into helping him and rather sneakily convinced his granddaughter Susan to investigate what has happened to the Hogfather and other mythical figures across the Disc.

It’s a difficult novel to summarise but suffice to say that Death and Susan manage to save Hogswatch. However, Death has become a little changed by what he witnesses over the course of this night, and Susan also becomes a little more resigned to what her idea of family looks like as well.

Hogfather marks the important moments of the calendar in our collective consciousness and explores why they mean so much to us. Whether it’s the reason why the Tooth Fairy (whichever shift is on duty at the moment, of course) collects teeth, or why there’s a particular pattern of frost on our windows during Winter or why we just can’t get our kitchen drawers open when we really want to, Hogfather explores the idea of belief and how that makes us different to any other bunch of primates looking for their next meal.

And it’s a cracking yarn as well. Jonathan Teatime (not pronounced that way, just so you know) is the assassin charged with eliminating the Hogfather. He does so in what seems to be a rather roundabout way, employing a team of petty gangsters and failed wizards to help him find a way into the weird adjacent universe where the mythical figures of our lives live, and planning to kill them all. However, what he doesn’t count on is the innate need of humanity to create these mythical figures as a way of explaining the mysteries of the universe, providing an answer to questions like “Where do my socks go when I wash them?” or “Where do verrucas come from?”

This entry into the series is also a lot sharper and darker than a lot of the previous stories, as well. Death discovers (although I’m really not sure how he missed it) that humans are frequently discriminated against by their economic status, a caste system that even a world-spanning entity like the Hogfather cannot ignore, despite Albert explaining socio-economics to him very carefully. But what Death cannot argue against, and what he uses as his chief defence against the Auditors, is the power of belief and how it can completely change the world:

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

And when Susan argues with him that he shouldn’t patronise people with tricks and charades like pretending to be the Hogfather, he counters with the devastating argument of:

THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY.

Death understands that no matter how rational and logical humans can be we still cling to ideas like fairness and truth despite there being no real evidence that they matter outside of our need to place a sense of order over our dealings with each other.

It’s a powerful message but it’s also one that confounds Pratchett’s own atheism. But I really don’t think he cared because he knew of the innate need we have for telling stories to explain the world to ourselves. However, you can take those stories too far… By all accounts, Sir Terry was a fierce and angry man, always worried about people being treated correctly. This anger can be read in all of his books when he talks about the injustices dealt out by the unworthy strong over the voiceless weak. In Hogfather we see it when Death and Albert intervene in the story of the Little Match Girl, taking that to places that Hans Christian Anderson never dreamt of; or when they let the Disc’s equivalent of Good King Wenceslas know that he should be looking after the vassals in his care all year long, not just when the season dictates a little bit of compassion.

I love Hogfather. Part of it is the way it skewers so many of our sacred cows about Christmas and the absolute meaninglessness behind them, despite them being a central part of our culture. Another part is the way that it examines just why the middle of Winter is such an important time to humanity, not just to those interested in exchanging (or receiving) gifts. But the biggest part is that it is just a great story.

The idea of Death taking yet another break from his work is quite worn out by this point but the way in which he co-opts another anthropomorphical figure’s role manages to subvert it nicely. It’s also lovely how he openly admits to coercing Susan into helping him so early on in the piece rather than waiting until the end of the book to admit it. This is also a novel about dealing with family, which is entirely appropriate in a novel about Christmas, and the understanding that Death and Susan reach by the end of it is lovely and completely relatable.

I played Albert in a stage production of Hogfather three years ago. While he had been portrayed by Sir David Jason in a TV adaptation a few years before that – thus rendering my own effort somewhat redundant – I pride myself that I managed to show a little nuance in the role and give some entertainment to the audience. There are three main threads to the stage version: Death and Albert taking on the role of Hogfather and cheeky elf; Susan and her various accomplices working out what happened to the Hogfather; and Teatime and his crew working hard to destroy imagination on the Disc. These threads rarely come into contact with each other, making it a rather lonely experience at times, especially when you yourself are acting against only one other person wearing a skeleton mask and black robe for about 90% of your scenes, although we had one rather lovely scene with Susan where we convince her to help us out without her realising, and a quite lovely set piece in the Hogfather’s grotto in a store in ankh-Morpork. Fortunately, the actor playing Death and I built a rapport with each other that made our interactions a little more realistic given the relationship between us and we were also able to bounce ideas and rather stupid jokes off each other during the rehearsal process as well.

For me, though, Hogfather came at a time in my life when I had children who were just beginning to understand that Christmas meant something more than boxes covered in wrapping paper and that it was a wonderful celebratory time of year. I grew up surrounded by messages of peace and goodwill in this season, but it hits differently when you are responsible for the development of smaller versions of yourself. The message of Hogfather, for me, is that we should acknowledge that there are some ridiculous beliefs in the world that make no sense but that they also do us some good. Justice and Mercy might not physically exist but we have it within us to recreate them in our world so that others can enjoy their lives as much – if not more – as we do.

Coming Up Next: Commander Vimes has to arrest a war for a breach of the peace in Jingo.