In 1479 beetles were put on trial for ‘creeping secretly in the earth’
If you hold a Christmas beetle – small, brown, mechanical – in the palm of your hand, it moves as though under a spell. The spell commands it to keep walking, to burrow its surprisingly strong legs endlessly forwards, like the end of the year growing steadily nearer and just as steadily receding.
In Europe, Christmas beetles are called “cockchafers”. In the year 1478, they appeared in a French court to stand trial on the charge of having been sent by witches to destroy the laity’s crops (and jeopardise the church’s tithes).
