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 Christmas is
here and in all the outports the traditional spirit of the festive season
takes off! Mummers tramp every village lane and bypath and beat on nearly
every door. It's exciting, and without these disguised tramps it would be
a dead.
Christmas in the Outports.
Everyone looks forward to these nights with harsh raps on the back door and
everyone standing ready to extend a jovial welcome to the comic figures,
draped in fluttering clothes and veiled in funny masks.
Strangest of Tones
Inside they seat themselves around the kitchen and converse in the
strangest of tones. Now find out who is who.
Everybody sizes them up. Some are examined, and allow it, whereas others
resent it. There's a lot of prodding, fun making, and conversation.
And requests.
Naturally they ask for Christmas cake and something strong
to drink with it. Everybody expects this sweet request to be forthcoming
and generally everybody is prepared to pass around the plate and the
glasses too.
Dance on the Back Porch
And then the dance. Uncle John takes the kerosene lamp and leads the group
to the back porch where they beat it out to the sagging rhythm of the
floor beams.
There is always somebody around with a mouth organ or an accordion. When
there's no instrument at hand you can always fall back on Aunt Mary. She
knows the familiar ditties, and her vocal chords are as good as they ever
were. Her dadada-da's soon tire the mummers out and they stroll out
through the door, into the night and trudge off to someone's else's house
to go through the same exercise.
This Mummering custom is an old one.
It dates back to the middle ages and
was customary in England up to the time the colonists came to North
America at the beginning of the seventeenth century. With them they
brought their present-day customs but they have changed somewhat with the
centuries.
Origins.
The original mummering was a play that was acted in the kitchen. It dates
back to the middle ages. The play was very short and its cast consisted of
three chief characters and two or three minor ones.
Father Christmas.
The leader of the group was Father Christmas who introduced the play. The
other characters staged a hand-to-hand fight. There was Saint George, the
patron saint of England, and a Turkish Knight or some other stalwart
figure.
In the combat Saint George emerged the hero whereas his opponent, badly
defeated, lay fatally wounded. But he soon recovered through the black
magic performances of a witch doctor.
It was during this resurrection scene that the comic element entered the
play and drew forth a torrent of uproarious laughter from the spectators.
The play then ended and the group trudged off to another house to re-enact
the same scene.
This old custom was practised in Newfoundland by the early inhabitants but
it faded with the years, taking on local colour and hilarity, until our
present manner of Mummering lost all shreds of its original play-acting.
Odd and comical as the custom is, it adds zest and colour to Christmas in
the Newfoundland outports.
Elf
Culture | Mummering index
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