Anyone emerging wanly today after the excesses of Christmas can console themselves with the thought that at least it was a lot shorter than Christmas in central and eastern Europe.
The season there is made up of two 12-day blocks, says Hungarian-born Linda Degh, distinguished professor of folklore at the University of Indiana (Bloomington) and currently visiting professor of ethnology at Edinburgh University's school of Scottish studies.
Christmas begins on the night of December 5 with children leaving their shoes at the window in the hope that St Nicholas will turn up to fill them with sweets, oranges and apples. Since the saint is accompanied by whip-wielding devils who punish naughty children, the shoes may also contain a silver or gold-covered whip with little devils attached to it.
European rituals are an amalgam of Mediterranean and Nordic pagan traditions, says Professor Degh. "In the Mediterranean, it was all gaiety, eating, drinking, celebrating the sun, while Yule in the Celtic and Nordic countries was more solemn, commemorating the dead." In the winter your ancestors could return and help or punish you.
The Europeans were an agricultural people, and their concerns were fertility and growth, says Professor Degh. Christianity adapted the symbolism of the battle between winter and spring, replacing the sun with Christ, the hero of light, who defeats the darkness, or the power of evil.
Other traditions appear to focus on the martyred St Lucia on December 13, although they are in fact based on pagan rituals to banish witches. In some central and eastern European villages, the men each make a chair from 13 kinds of wood between December 13 and Christmas Eve. When they sit on the chair in church, they will be able to detect witches in the local community, whose hitherto invisible antlers will be revealed. The men also carry poppy or mustard seed - a pursuing witch will be delayed by having to pick up the seeds strewn in her path.
Every day between December 13 and Christmas Eve, young women take a bite from a single apple, and then make a wish. Unmarried women also make dumplings carved with the names of potential suitors, and the first to rise to the top of the cooking pot will be the name of the future husband.
During the 12 days after Christmas, many parts of central Europe enjoy the Bethlehem play of the shepherds coming to see the new-born Messiah, performed by mummers who go from door to door. This too has pagan connotations, with the shepherds wearing wooden masks and animal costumes. The pagan winter solstice theme of death and rebirth is acted out during the play, with an old shepherd dying and being brought back to life by a doctor.
There is a distinction between the Catholic and Protestant traditions, says Professor Degh, with the Protestant version highlighting the slapstick element of the old shepherd misunderstanding everything that is going on, and mishearing the angels' glad tidings. "The Catholic version is more sombre and more frightening."
The Bethlehem play was recently discovered being performed in Toledo, Ohio, says Professor Degh, but in general the Americans have put their own distinctive stamp on the festive season. The theme of light and brightness has been taken up with a vengeance, and neighbours vie with one another for the largest, most dazzling outdoor display of illuminations. It is not a tradition which Professor Degh follows.