In the background you are hearing the 15th-century English Christmas “Boar’s-Head Carol,” and looking at a closeup of a boar hunt from the month of December in the lavishly illustrated _Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry_ (circa 1440). In my home state of Pennsylvania, deer rifle season is heralded by hunters as an important expression of sportsmanship, and ritualized among families as part of what makes this season special. In the Middle Ages, boar hunting took on a similar role, especially for aristocratic Europeans. Boars exemplified the qualities of courage and ferocity — dogs might bring a boar down, but their hides would only be truly pierced by a hunter’s knife. It took skill and valor to take down a boar, and many aristocrats died in unsuccessful boar-hunting ventures (King Philip IV of France, e.g.). Boars, unlike other domesticated animals, were slaughtered at the start of winter to make food for the cold months that followed.
Source(s): Illustration from Wikimedia Commons. Carol is from Magpie Lane, “The Boar’s Head Carol,” youtube. “The Death of the Boar,” _The Medieval Garden Enclosed: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Clousters Museum & Gardens,” Friday Dec 4, 2009, Deirdre Larkin; _Boaring Medievalist_ “Boars of Battle: the Wild Boar in the Early Middle Ages,” 2/27/2017.
