This Week in YouTube March 9
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Hey friends, welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast. This is the weekly highlight reel of videos that I have put out on YouTube. So in case you don't know, you can go over to YouTube and watch all my videos. The channel is History and Coffee, and you can just search for my name as well, Heather Tesco, History and Coffee, and you will get it. And you can subscribe there. Thank you to the many people who already subscribe. And then what I've started doing is

weekly highlight reels of some of the videos that have gone out on YouTube that would be of interest to the podcast listeners as well. So thanks for listening. And you can also, like I said, go over and join me on YouTube history and coffee and search for Heather. And there I am. So let's get right into it.

Today, we are talking about Advent, the Advent season, and how the Tudors would have been celebrating the Advent season. So it is so perfect, you guys. I am so set up with this because it's snowing outside. I don't know if you can see it in the background or not, but there's little flakes. It's not going to land. It's been too warm, but it's snowing. So

The word Advent itself, interestingly, means, you know, preparation or coming. And traditionally in Gaul and Spain in the 4th, 5th century, Advent was a time when they were preparing Christians for the baptisms that would happen at the Feast of the Epiphany, which I thought was really interesting. So it wasn't really about Christmas at all. It was preparing the new Christians for their baptism that would happen later.

By the 6th century, I think it was, it started to reach this point of preparation for Christmas, preparation spiritually, getting your soul ready to celebrate the birth of Christ, all of that. So...

This was a time for our tutor friends much more than today, I think. Although for a lot of people, like at my church, they light the Advent wreath. It's still kind of considered a time of preparation. It was a time of reflection, anticipation, being ready and what do they call it? Like watchful waiting marked by unique customs and traditions. The Advent period was also a period of fasting preparation.

So you weren't eating meat during that time. And it was about creating a space for the upcoming joy of Christmas.

So today we're going to talk about how the Tudors prepared for the festive season and the rituals that shaped their Advent experience. And then if you are curious about bringing a little bit more Tudor history into your holiday season, I'm going to tell you about Yuletide with the Tudors, which is starting next week when Advent starts on December 1st. I can't believe it's almost December. Like yesterday was TudorCon, I swear, in September. But now it's December.

Anyway, Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and it was deeply tied to the church calendar. For the tutors, this was a sacred time focused on penance, on prayer, and on spiritual preparation. It was a chance to reflect on faith and the significance for each person of Christ's birth.

Fasting was a major part of the season. Unlike today's lead up to Christmas, where there's like a lot of parties and a lot of indulgence, the Tudors abstained from meat, dairy, and other rich foods during this time. The Advent fast also heightened the sense of celebration when the Christmas beast finally arrived. Imagine abstaining for weeks, knowing that the reward would be these roasted meats, spiced pies, and sugared treats would be waiting for you. And

You'd have to be cooking all of that while you were fasting. So that seems a little bit like torture. But anyway, so daily life during Advent centered on both personal and communal observances. Many Tudor families would have been attending the regular church services. Prayers and hymns would create a solemn yet hopeful atmosphere. Homes were lit with candles, a symbol of the light that would soon arrive with Christmas Day, the light coming into the darkness.

Greenery like holly and ivy would slowly make its way into homes. You would really go out on Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas, a couple days before Christmas, and get all of your greenery. But you'd start to have little sprinklings of it throughout the Advent season. And these evergreens represented hope and renewal, a comforting reminder during the very darkest days of winter.

But Advent wasn't solely about self-denial. Charity was a key component of the season. Wealthier households would share food and resources with their neighbors, ensuring that nobody was left out as Christmas approached. Acts of generosity were a reflection of the community's values and faith.

While Advent was a time for reflection, for preparing your soul, all of that kind of thing, it was also filled with quiet preparations for the celebration to come. In Tudor homes, the weeks leading up to Christmas were spent transforming the space. Like I said, you'd start to decorate these decorations, this greenery. It's actually symbols of eternal life, and they would provide protection against evil spirits and, you know, the kind of evil in the dark.

In the kitchens, the preparations for the Christmas feast were already underway. Ale was brewed, meats had been salted and were being cured. Spices like cinnamon and cloves, rare and precious, were carefully prepared for pies and puddings. The scent of these preparations would fill the home, a tantalizing reminder of the feast that lay ahead.

Advent was a season of contrast. The quiet, reflective weeks stood in stark opposition to the joy and abundance of Christmas Day and then the 12 days of Christmas. This balance made the eventual celebration all the more meaningful, a reward for weeks of fasting and patience. Not everybody would wait until Christmas to eat. There's a poem by Robert Herrick

that shows that some people were not prepared to wait that long. It says, So you would have to guard the Christmas pie to make sure that people didn't come and get it before Christmas itself.

reminds me of my child trying to find her Christmas presents before Christmas. Such basic human things, anyway. So Advent wasn't just a waiting period. It was a time of small but meaningful rituals that built anticipation for Christmas. Through my Yuletide with the Tudors program...

Starts on December 1st. You can explore these traditions day by day from the significance of fasting to the stories behind the Tudor holiday symbols. The program will help bring you closer to the Tudor experience with daily videos. It's get a digital advent calendar every day opens up to a new video with some aspect of Tudor holiday. We go from December 1st all the way through to January 6th. So we do keep the 12 days of Christmas as well. And we still have the early bird price going on.

There was a lot of interest in it, so I kept it going. So you can sign up at the early bird price using the code early bird Yuletide to save $5 and step into your season full of history and holiday magic. So Advent was a cornerstone of the holiday season, shaping the Julian abundance of Christmas Day from fasting and reflection to charity and preparation. It was a time of quiet meaning that set the stage for the celebration.

I will leave you with a quote from Pope Leo the Great on fasting during the Advent season. What is more effective than fasting by which we approach God and resisting the devil we overcome indulgent vices?

For fasting has always been food for virtue. Chaste thoughts, reasonable desires, and more sound deliberations profit from fasting. And our spirit is renewed for moral excellence. So that is why people fasted during Advent. So about 10 years ago, I did an episode called Pregnancy and Childbirth in Tudor England. And it became the first kind of viral episode.

episode I had. A lot of people listened to it. It became my most popular episode and it actually led to like I did a course on it, which is still available. It just became something that people were interested in. And I thought it was kind of funny that I, well, it wasn't funny. I did that episode then because I had recently had a child of my own. Today, we are going to talk about menopause. So for the men in the audience,

Just know we're going to be talking about some lady stuff. All right. And, you know, honestly, it would be cool for you, especially if you are in a relationship with, you know, a person who is possibly going to experience this. It would be cool to know the history. You can get like some super good bonus points if you go up to the woman in your life and say,

Oh, I learned today about the history of menopause that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, we're going to talk about it. You know, that would lead to some, I think, I think, I don't know, maybe the ladies can chime in here, but I, if my husband came home and said,

Heather, what I think is so interesting is that for almost 2,000 years, people viewed menopause through the lens of Galen and the ancient Romans. You know, the humors and all of that. Isn't that interesting? I would be like, oh, my gosh, that's cool. Because, you know, it happens to a lot of women as we start to go through this. Like we get these symptoms and we get the stuff happens. And I'm

A lot of people gaff light us about it. They say, oh, that's just in your head, or you're just tired, or, you know, you're just moody, or maybe coffee, or blah, blah, blah. And you know what? That's not the case.

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So we're going to talk about menopause. So one thing that I think is kind of interesting about this period in a woman's life is, especially for the tutors, a woman's worth was so often tied so clearly to her ability to have a child. So for us today, menopause marks a biological transition. And, you know, there's some of that, like, especially when you get hormonal. I'm like, oh, I'm not going to have another baby. But menopause

In the Tudor period, it was like that on steroids, right? So there was a whole host of cultural, medical, moral implications. So we are going to talk about how the Tudors understood and misunderstood this universal experience.

To understand how the Tudors viewed menopause, we first need to visit the world of humoral theory, a medical framework inherited from the ancient Greeks and Romans. According to this theory, the body was governed by four, count them, four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.

Health relied on maintaining the right balance of these fluids, which is why you would see people being bled when they had the gum and cold, right? Because there was too much of a buildup of that. So menstruation was believed to expel poisonous blood and maintain that humoral balance. But what happened when menstruation stopped?

to tutor physicians this signaled a dangerous imbalance a buildup of toxins that could pollute the entire body symptoms like hot flashes and irritability were proof that the humors were out of alignment

My humor is out of alignment a lot these days, but that's a different story. Anyway, the remedies were as dramatic as the diagnosis. Physicians might prescribe bloodletting or herbal purgatives, including concoctions of saffron, myrrh, or even the infamous hellbore. What was hellbore? Hellbore was black hellbore, was a plant with a long history in medieval and ancient medicine.

It was a purgative, and so it would induce vomiting. It was infamous because while it was a potent treatment for various ailments, it was also highly toxic and could cause severe side effects or even death if improperly administered. It was in gynecological use. It was recommended for menstrual irregularities and reproductive issues, including things associated with menopause.

Because it was so dangerous, it was also, and because a lot of premenstrual or because a lot of menopausal women had used it, it was also associated with witchcraft. So yay for that. These treatments rooted in ancient texts reflected the ongoing belief that women's bodies were inherently unstable, requiring constant intervention to maintain equilibrium.

Of course, in Tudor England, a woman's fertility was central to her identity. Marriage alliances, family lineage, and economic security often depended on her ability to bear children, as did the succession of the kingdom. So what happened when that ability ended? Postmenopausal women were often seen as stepping outside of the natural order. Without the potential for childbearing, they were often cast as jealous, bitter, or even dangerous.

Popular belief held that these women who would be envious of younger mothers might use the evil eye to cause infertility or even miscarriages. Because that's a thing.

This fear found its darkest expression in the witch hunts. Of course, older infertile women, especially those who remained sexually active, that was a big old no-no once you were menopausal, were often accused of witchcraft. Their supposed unnatural desires, coupled with their inability to fulfill societal expectations, made them prime targets for suspicion.

These women were often seen as dangerous because they were no longer tied to the traditional roles of motherhood, so they were perceived as free agents. And that freedom was very frightening to most people, probably even to themselves a little bit.

But the story of menopause in Tudor society wasn't just one of fear and condemnation. There was another, quieter narrative at play, the rise of the wise woman. That's what I want to be. Post-menopausal women, particularly those, particularly, I can talk, those who were widowed or no longer bound to child rearing, sometimes carved out roles as healers or counselors in their communities.

Their knowledge of herbal remedies and their life experience made them invaluable, even as male physicians sought to discredit them. Yet even this respect came with limits. As male-dominated medicine professionalized during the early modern period, these wise women were increasingly seen as competitors or, worse, very dangerous relics of a superstitious past.

Tudor physicians argued that relying on their remedies could cause more harm than help, and that further marginalized women's roles in health care.

By the 18th and 19th century, menopause itself began to take on new meanings, often framed as a moral reckoning. Women who experienced severe symptoms were often blamed for having led improper lives. The so-called youthful indiscretions that they were being punished for ranged from eating spicy foods to reading novels.

to drinking alcohol, or even, gosh darn it, having a libido after the socially acceptable age of 40. This shift marked a transition from outright fear of menopausal women to a more paternalistic judgment of their lives. The focus was less on witchcraft and more on controlling their behavior. But the underlying message remained the same. Women were to blame for their own physical changes.

Despite these challenges, many women found ways to navigate this phase of life with agency and resilience. Some embraced the freedom that came with the end of the childbearing years, stepping into roles of leadership or mentorship. Others relied on the traditional remedies and sought solace in their faith and their communities.

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Ultimately, the Tudor perspective on menopause offers a fascinating glimpse into how deeply gender medicine and society have shaped the way that we view aging. For Tudor women, menopause wasn't a biological event. It was a moment that redefined a woman's place in the world, often in ways that were limiting but could sometimes be empowering. Interestingly, the word menopause itself didn't actually come about until 1821.

Um, and it was finally readily acknowledged in the 1960s. But even then, it was in the context of how irritating it was to men, because of course it was. And there was a doctor in the 1960s called Robert A. Wilson, who described menopausal women as, I kid you not, castrates. So that's fun.

So yeah, you guys, this is a great time of life. This is an amazing time of life. I have no filter anymore. I say all of the stuff that's on my mind. I yelled at somebody at Target recently because they cut in line in front of a young mama who had a baby. So to start with, Target is like a safe space for mamas, right? You don't, like, Target is like our spot. Target is like a...

I mean, like, look, obviously everybody can go to Target, but it's especially a safe space for mamas. And then this guy, like, just cut right in line of this woman who had a baby. And I was like, do you want me to, like, go tell him? She's like, no, don't worry about it. Don't make a fuss. And I was like, uh-uh. No. I haven't reached perimenopause, like, to waste all of these hot flashes on not being able to tell people like this when they butt in line that, you know, that they butt in line. And, like, I...

I'm going to. So like if I'm going to go through the hot flashes, like the reward for that has to be that I lose my filter and I can just tell everybody everything. So. So, yeah. So I yelled at this guy and he acted like he didn't even know what was going on. And I was like, yeah, that's like my whole point is that you're totally oblivious to the fact that you just cut in line in front of this woman. And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I was like, yeah.

I'm really clear on that. And that's what I'm telling you is that you, what's going on. And you just got in line in front of a mama with a baby. And then the mama felt really embarrassed. And I was like, don't, you shouldn't feel me. You didn't cut in line anyway. So it's a really great thing. So if you are a younger woman who is looking forward to someday experiencing the magic that is perimenopause, what I can tell you is that in many ways, it is like puberty going through puberty all over again. However, without the energy,

and the body of a 16-year-old and with the added pressures of having dependents and having bills and, you know, being tired all the time, which is why we drink coffee. So that's fun. So anyway, that's my little story on menopause. If you would like me to dig into different aspects on that more deeply and actually maybe do a whole episode on it, let me know in the comments because there's not a ton of research out there on it. Surprise, surprise.

I really am snarky today. But there is enough to do, you know, a longer deep dive episode. And I would be happy to do that if there was interest. If you're a guy and you had to sit through this, you know, congratulations. You made it through. Well done. Although we get to live it. So, you know, well done us too. Thanks so much for listening to this week's YouTube highlights. Remember, you can go over and subscribe. History and Coffee, Heather Tesco. You will find me there.

And we'll be back again next week with more highlights from what went out on YouTube throughout the week. Thanks so much. Have a great week.

Welcome, friends, to the Playful Scratch from the California Lottery. We've got a special guest today, the Scratcher's Scratch Master himself, Juan. Juan, you've mastered 713 playful ways to scratch. Impressive. How'd you do it? Well, I began with a coin, then tried a guitar pick. I even used a cactus once. I can scratch with anything. Even this mic right here. See? See? Well, there you have it. Scratchers are fun no matter how you scratch. Scratchers from the California Lottery. A little play can make your day.

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