Welsh Christmas Traditions

Christmas in Wales has customs found nowhere else: carols sung by candlelight before dawn, toffee pulled by hand while waiting for them, and a horse’s skull in a white sheet knocking at the door with a song. Some are centuries old, some faded and came back, and most still turn on singing. Here is when each happens, what people do, and what we know of where it comes from.

Plygain: carols before dawn

When: Traditionally in the small hours of Christmas morning. Amgueddfa Cymru, the national museum of Wales, records services held somewhere between 3 and 6 a.m., the later hour becoming more common over time. Today many Plygain services are held in the evening, through December and into January.

What people do: A Plygain belongs to the singers. Parties of carollers (a family, a few friends, a trio, a soloist) walk up one after another and sing, usually unaccompanied and in close harmony. There’s no printed programme and no announcer. The carols are in Welsh, and it’s a point of honour not to repeat one that has already been sung that night, so a long evening can bring twenty or thirty different carols. In the old services, people from the farthest farms brought their own candles to light the church; in Llanfyllin, local chandlers made special Plygain candles, canhwyllau plygain, in the 19th century.

Where it comes from: The word plygain once meant an ordinary early morning service. The museum, following the folklorist Trefor M. Owen, describes the Christmas Plygain as a survival of the pre-Reformation Christmas service, reshaped after the Reformation, when carols in Welsh became its main attraction. Unusually for an old church festival, it was kept by the Nonconformist chapels too. The early-morning custom died out in most places by the end of the 19th century, but the carol tradition stayed strongest in the Welsh-speaking hill country of mid Wales, around Mallwyd, Llanerfyl and Llangynog, and has spread again across the country.

Our card The Valley Chapel shows the kind of place a Plygain fills: a grey stone chapel in a snowy valley at dusk, its windows lit.

Noson Gyflaith: the toffee evening

When: Traditionally Christmas Eve, or the long night before the Plygain.

What people do: Butter, sugar and treacle are boiled, poured onto a buttered slate or hearthstone, and pulled by hand into golden ropes, with everyone’s hands greased so the toffee doesn’t stick. The toffee is cyflaith (also cyfleth, or simply taffy), and a noson gyflaith is a toffee evening, as much a party as a recipe.

Where it comes from: The museum records young people gathering at farmhouses to make cyflaith through the night while waiting for the Plygain, decorating the houses with holly and mistletoe as they went. Recipes varied from one region to the next.

Evergreens on Christmas morning

When: Christmas Eve night and the early hours of Christmas Day.

What people do: In rural Wales, homes were often decked with holly and other greenery in the early morning, to pass the hours before the Plygain. Evergreens were thought unlucky indoors before Christmas Eve, and unlucky to take down before Twelfth Night.

Where it comes from: Bringing in evergreens at midwinter is older than Christianity in much of Europe; the Christian meanings came later. The museum gives one local belief: whichever came into the house first, holly or ivy, told you whether the man or the woman would have the upper hand that year.

Mari Lwyd: the Grey Mare at the door

When: From Christmas Day through to Twelfth Night, and into Hen Galan, the “old New Year” in mid-January.

What people do: The Mari Lwyd, the “Grey Mare”, is a real horse’s skull on a pole, decorated with ribbons and rosettes, with glass bottles for eyes and a sprung jaw that snaps shut. The carrier hides under a long white sheet. At dusk a party, traditionally of men, carries her from house to house or pub to pub. At each door comes the pwnco, a contest of improvised, cheeky verses sung between the party outside and the household inside, with the door shut. It could go on for an hour. If the Mari side won, or was allowed to win, it came in, and the Mari ran about snapping her jaws and frightening the children while the leader pretended to hold her back. There was food and drink, sometimes a little money, and a farewell song.

Where it comes from: Nobody knows how old the Mari Lwyd really is. The earliest written account dates from 1798, and the custom was at its height between about 1850 and 1920, almost entirely in south Wales: Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and Carmarthenshire. It declined in the 20th century, partly because the verse contest was sung in Welsh, partly because the chapels frowned on the drinking that came with it. Interest has grown again in recent years, and groups now take the Mari out across Wales. Visit Wales points to Llangynwyd, near Bridgend, and a torchlit procession in Llanwrtyd Wells on New Year’s Eve.

Hela’r Dryw: the old wren hunt

When: Around Twelfth Night.

What people do: Like Ireland’s Wren Boys, Welsh wren parties once carried a wren from house to house, often in a little decorated “wren house”. In some places the bird was caught alive and let go at the end of the day.

Where it comes from: The custom, Hela’r Dryw (“hunting the wren”), lasted in Pembrokeshire into the early 20th century and is rarely seen now. Its origins are as uncertain as those of the Irish wren hunt, described in our guide to Christmas customs in Ireland.

Calennig and the New Year

When: New Year’s Day, Dydd Calan, before midday.

What people do: Children go from door to door singing New Year greetings, from a simple Blwyddyn Newydd Dda to longer verses, and receive calennig, a New Year’s gift. Today it’s usually a coin or sweets. The traditional gift was an apple stuck with three sticks, decorated with a sprig of box and hazelnuts. In Cwm Gwaun, near Fishguard, families still keep Hen Galan in mid-January, because the valley never accepted the calendar change of 1752.

Our guide to Welsh greetings for the New Year tells the Calennig story in full, with the words to write in a card.

Keeping the tradition far from home

Welsh communities abroad have always kept their singing: the Welsh North American Association traces its Gymanfa Ganu, the great hymn-singing festival, back to 1929, and its 2026 festival programme included a session on Plygain. If you’re far from Wales this Christmas, a few customs travel easily:

• Hold a toffee evening. A noson gyflaith needs nothing but butter, sugar, treacle and a cold, clean surface, and children love the pulling. Take care with the hot syrup.
• Sing one carol in Welsh. You don’t need a chapel or a choir. One carol, sung together at the table, is a small Plygain of your own.
• Give calennig. On New Year’s morning, let the children go round the house (or the street, if your neighbours are game) for a coin and a sweet, with a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda at each door.
• Plan a winter visit. If you’re home for the holidays, Amgueddfa Cymru brings the Mari Lwyd to life at St Fagans National Museum of History in winter, and holds carol services in its old chapel.

When you’re missing the family in Wales, our page of words for family far away may help.

The Christmas greeting in Welsh

The Welsh for Merry Christmas is Nadolig Llawen. Father Christmas is Siôn Corn, and Boxing Day is Gŵyl San Steffan. Our guide to writing Nadolig Llawen in a card explains what the words mean, how to wish the whole family well, and how to sign off in Welsh.

Cards for a Welsh Christmas

Our cards from Wales are scenes from the valleys and the coast: the chapel at dusk, a slate cottage under a crescent moon, a lighthouse on the cliffs. On every one, Nadolig Llawen is written above your own message while the scene moves softly behind. Send it by email or text, or schedule it to arrive on Christmas morning.