According to Discworld tradition, the Hogfather visits every house on the Disc on Hogswatchnight, delivering toys to children, in return for which the children leave out glasses of sherry for the Hogfather and pork pies. When the Hogfather vanishes, his role is taken over by the most unlikely of anthropomorphic manifestations as Death steps into the breach.

Generally, Pratchett's attacks on Christmas is right on. Too closely on target, in fact. Hogswatchnight and Christmas share the resemblence known as identity. Hogfather would have been more enjoyable if Pratchett had done more than simply renamed Santa Claus and magically changed his reindeer into pigs. Attacking the commercialization of the holidays is an easy target and has been done frequently in the past. It would have been nice to see Pratchett do something different with such obvious material.

This being Pratchett, there is more to the novel than just the Hogfather. in fact, the book opens with an unknown figure hiring the Ankh-Morpork Assassin's Guild to end an unnamed figure, although it quickly become apparent the victim is the Hogfather. Mr. Downey, the Chief of the Assassin's Guild, accepts the contract and gives it to the psychotic assassin, Mr. Teatime (pronounced Teh-ah-tim-eh) who has used his spare time to figure out how to kill anthropomophic manifestations, including Death.

However, Pratchett ignores Mr. Teatime and his cohorts, as well as the shadowy consortium which hired him, for large stretches of the book. When he does return to them, their activities and motives are nover particularly clear. They seem to be stumbling through their crimes without paying attention to the plot.

Hogfather does not rank among the higher echelons on the Discworld chronicles. Although it may be better, or at least more polished, than such early works as The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, it lacks the constant humor of those books. This is the twentieth book in the series, which would normally indicate that the author should give up, however, Pratchett proved he still can write a good Discworld novel with the nineteenth book in the series, Feet of Clay, so it is too soon, way too soon, I hope, to presume that Discworld should come to an end.

"Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs."

Susan, the ultimate sensible governess (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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"ER...HO. HO. HO."

Death makes a career move (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor.

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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"Did you check the list?" YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?

He's gonna find out... (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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"That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?"

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."

Bursar 1 - Hex 0 (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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Glingleglingleglingle.

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.

Lord Downey reflects on Mister Teatime (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

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It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought