What Did Medieval Peasants Actually Do All Winter?

What did medieval peasants actually do all winter? We follow one village family through the winter of 1310, from the November pig slaughter to Easter: the salt barrel and the smoke in the rafters, first sleep and second sleep, threshing in the dark, twelve days of Christmas, the Candlemas checkpoint and the hungry gap of Lent. 0:00 Choosing who survives the winter 1:51 Meet the family 3:10 Blood month 7:05 One room, one fire 10:48 Eight hours of light 14:08 The work never stops 17:05 What they ate 19:47 Twelve days of Christmas 22:33 Ice, mud and mischief 25:11 Candlemas: half your hay 27:11 The hungry gap 29:31 When winter goes wrong 31:35 Spring 32:45 What a medieval winter teaches us Sources: William FitzStephen, Description of London (c. 1173), on skating with bone skates; bone skates in the London Museum collection City of London proclamation against football, 13 April 1314 (V&A collection record) M. Lewis, C. Roberts, K. Manchester (1995), maxillary sinusitis in medieval Wharram Percy and York, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 98(4) Smoke-blackened thatch research (J. Letts; Building Conservation, "Thatching with Long Straw") W. C. Jordan, The Great Famine (on 1315–1317) R. Ekirch, At Day's Close (on first and second sleep) Bede, The Reckoning of Time, ch. 15 (on Blotmonath) Wat, Agnes and their family are a composite built from manor records, chronicles and archaeology. Scripts are researched from historical sources. Visuals are AI-assisted reconstructions. Subscribe for a new question about medieval life every week. #MedievalHistory #MiddleAges #History