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Christmases Long, Long Ago
Local event relives centuries-old traditions
by Paige M. Travis
Christmas is a chameleon. It transforms to match our ways and means, advances with our modern lifestyle, absorbs our best intentions and twists in unexpected ways. The sentiment “Christmas isn’t the way it used to be” has always been true; it’s always changing.
So what do people mean when they refer to traditional celebrations of the Christmas holiday? Many people intend to increase their personal emphasis of the religious elements, to remind themselves and others that Jesus is the reason for the season. Or they desire to make Christmas less commercial by de-emphasizing the importance of gifts. But other people want to turn back the clock to a time when textbook religion was a scant consideration and commercialism wasn’t even an issue when it came to throwing down during the darkest part of the year.
For 20-plus years, Karan Dotson has spent part of her Christmas season dressing up in an 18th century costume and dancing at the Laurel Theater’s Old English Christmas Fete. The event began informally as a banquet for the extended family of dancers who meet at the Laurel during the week, but after three years they welcomed audiences to watch.
“We decided it was so fun we thought we’d offer it to the community,” she says.
Toby Koosman, concert manager at the Laurel Theater, was also involved back in those days.
“The banquet was an idea Karan had that the Morris, English and rapper sword dancers should get together and entertain each other, and she passed around historic recipes,” says Koosman. “[The first one] was so much fun we decided to do it again, not suspecting that it would become an institution.”
After the event moved to Wesley Woods for one year, it then landed at its permanent home at Laurel. As Koosman recalls, the group invited more people each year. “Then Karan got the idea to go public, and we dropped the banquet, keeping the plum pudding and wassail.”
Dotson serves as artistic director of the event, which has become a tradition for the participants as well as some audience members.
“I have had a number of audience members say that they come every year, that it’s part of their tradition.”
Much like our modern celebrations are cobbled together from a variety of inspirations with historical, familial or fictional roots, the Fete loosely recreates celebratory scenes that might have played out in the manor houses of wealthy English landowners between 1500 and 1700.
“The traditions represented are a combination of traditional and historic dance, music, recitation and spectacle,” says Koosman. “They don’t match in period or social class and are performed with varying degrees of authenticity and accomplishment.
“Old English Christmas was a carnival-like holiday where the rich were expected to open their houses to the poor, and a lot of the folk performance traditions like caroling were begging customs that poor people did, expecting food, drink and money in return. The Fete makes use of this idea, and of many time-honored techniques of low-tech spectacle.”
Blessedly free of flashing lights and tinny computerized music, the Rapper Sword Dance is a thrilling exhibition of skill that Dotson describes as one of the highlights of the program. Take five dancers holding flexible bands of steel with wooden handles on each end and set them loose in a showy, aerobic jig. Dave Greenwood has been sword dancing for about 15 years, and he admits to getting winded by the 10-minute performance during the Fete. The sword dancers’ monthly meetings at the Laurel Theater culminate during the Fete.
“It’s usually our biggest performance of the year,” says Greenwood. “We’ll try to develop some modifications for the Fete every year. So it’s not identical to the years before, but it’s always pretty close.”
Originated by coal miners in northern England, the rapper sword dance is an athletic feat; Greenwood says the dance steps take a good while to learn. He incorporates humor into the performance by having eight dancers weave in and out of the five-person dance.
“We don’t do it, but some groups will have a fool that dances in and around,” he adds.
But a fool does make an appearance in the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, whose origins aren’t completely known. It came from a parish in England and may celebrate a hunt or the New Year. Different from the social dances and exhibition dances, the Horn Dance is a ritual dance that contains the figures of six deer represented by men carrying antlers, plus the folk characters of Robin Hood, a woman thought to be Maid Marian, a hobby horse and the fool.
December 16, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 51
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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