Arts & Culture

MUMMERING: A REACTION AGAINST THE COMMERCIALISM OF CHRISTMAS

Reviewed by Robyn Lee

Mummers and Masks. A documentary produced by Peter Blow and Chris Brookes in association with Vision TV and CBC Television.

After dark in Newfoundland, masked adults knock loudly on the doors of their neighbours' homes. It's not Halloween. It's the feast of St. Stephen, the day after Christmas, and the mummers have come to call.

     Mummers and Masks is a delightful one-hour documentary that examines the ancient, yet controversial, Christmas tradition of mummering. Condemned by Church and State, this once disappearing St. Stephen's Day celebration is experiencing rejuvenation. The mummers sing, dance, play instruments, and perform folk drama in the spirit of Christmas (and for alcoholic "spirits"). Along with the fun an element of danger exists; no one is quite sure whom they've allowed into their homes as the mummers' identities are carefully disguised. And of course, there may be safety issues. Everyone knows the stories: the legends of drunkenness, injuries, and even rumours of murder. But never mind, say the revelers, this is an important part of the Christmas celebrations!

     Mummering has been banned in the larger communities for 110 years, but each year in the small out-ports of Newfoundland, the fun carries on over the twelve days of Christmas. Centuries ago, settlers from Ireland and England brought this tradition from the Old World to the New. No one knows the origin of this pagan custom, but all over Europe mummers ritually "kill" mid-winter to hasten the spring. Each local drama differs slightly but the theme of life, death, and resurrection is the common thread. In rural Southern Ireland the mummers are called, "wren-boys" after the men who hunted wrens on St. Stephen's Day. Legend has it that a wren perched on the bush where the first Christian martyr St. Stephen hid and exposed him to those who stoned him to death. It is an apocryphal story, but the "wren-boys" stage parades in the larger communities. In Northern Ireland where parades split communities apart, mummering almost died out because of clerical disapproval and public safety. High School teacher, Brian Gallagher and his students produced mummer's dramas for television. These popular plays cross religious communities. The youths stage battles between Prince George and St. Patrick, and which champion dies depends on whether it is the Catholic version or the Protestant one. No matter which version, an integral part of the play occurs when someone calls for a doctor to "raise up the dead man." These television plays have been grafted onto something that oral tradition has kept alive since the Middle Ages.

     Mummering on St. Stephen's Day is related to the May Day fertility custom that has become a tourist attraction in rural England. Women wishing to become pregnant are publicly "bootied" by mummers dressed as a hobbyhorse. And the antics of the "horse" are unpredictably hilarious! The most controlled mummering takes place on New Year's Day in "Mummer's Row," the Irish section of Philadelphia. All the mummers that march in this parade must belong to licensed mummer's clubs. Banned by the Quakers until after the Civil War, a deep sense of community and family has kept this custom alive. Today, the Mummer's Parade is the biggest event of the year in Philadelphia. It is a glitzy, choreographed spectacle far different from the mummering that takes place in rural areas. Yet all mummers are basically polite people who get to act wild and transgress taboos for one day of the year.

     Part of what explains the growing popularity of the efforts to revive mummering is to see it as a reaction against the commercialism of Christmas. Peter Blow says that Christmas television programs talk about a greater meaning of Christmas, but no one ever says what it is. Mummers and Masks articulates this greater meaning. Mummering is about bringing people together. Death holds life in a state of tension. We would never be able to honour life without being conscious of the limit of death. We yearn to be connected to each other, and in this way we can ignore and "outwit" death. The Surrealist artists called the feelings and behaviours that we've had disciplined out of us "the sacred". Yet they claim that it is "the sacred" that allows us to communicate outside the realm of language and bond with each other. That mummering is coming back in Northern Ireland and bringing Catholics and Protestants together challenges the illegality of this custom. The film conveys not only the fun, but also a connection to a timeless past. There is wisdom in the churches that recognize that there's something good in the older traditions behind the celebrations!

Robyn Lee is a Cultural Studies major at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. She is also a painter and art teacher. Her last piece "Treating Water as a Human Right, Rather than a Commodity" appeared in the June 2002 edition of The Social Edge.

The World Premiere of Mummers and Masks airs on Vision TV on Thursday December 26, 2002.