2021 Life Logs, Day 353: Revels and Boston Commons Ice Skating
Date: Sunday, December 19, 2021
Weather: Overcast Turning Sunny Late PM; High Temp 43 (Boston), Low Temp 24 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Shadow and I were up early to do our mile walk in the misty rain this morning. Then I left Shadow for the day to go to Christmas Revels in Cambridge with Heather and family.
We knew we would not be home until evening, so I asked my trusty friends Karen and Peter Baranowski to come over in the afternoon to play outside with Shadow. Shadow and I send a big thank you to them.
Fifty one years ago author and performer, John Langstaff, launched the very first Christmas Revels. Here is what he wrote in the program notes in 1971: “Long before there was a Christmas, man celebrated at this time of the year upon noticing the return of the sun to higher elevations in the sky. Pagan rituals sprang up around this event, later to become tangled with Christian lore, which called for a celebration at a nearly identical date. Folk dances, songs, and plays often blended and blurred the pagan and Christian traditions. The result was a unique type of expression that was both wild and holy.”
Each year since, with the exception of the year of Covid 2020, Christmas Revels has been performed in the beautiful Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus in Cambridge.
Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, Ollie, and I thoroughly enjoyed this year’s production which takes place in the present day.
Usually, the audience is transported to another part of the world in a much earlier time. But this year, the ‘past’ visited the present at a 17th-century English pub, the George and Dragon, owned by an American couple and famous for its annual Christmas caroling party. I think it was particularly interesting to the boys as there were many references to the happenings in our lives over the past two years, including a plea for world peace and for reaching out in some way to the homeless among us. We all especially enjoyed the music played by the pub jazz band which was superb. It was a different kind of performance but still held true to the tradition of audience participation in the singing. That is by far the best part!
We attended an early afternoon performance and exited the theatre just before 3 pm. It was overcast and dreary when we entered, but the sun was shining brightly for our next adventure. We drove through Cambridge and across the bridge to the Boston Commons to go ice skate on Frog Pond. I was only an observer of this activity, but again, every one of us enjoyed it. I was dressed for the cold weather and sat on a park bench to watch the action. I could easily spot Ollie as he spun round and round the outdoor rink as he had on a bright blue tie-dyed sweatshirt.
The others were a little harder to find amongst the many merry skaters, but I eventually got good at finding them all. As the sun sunk slowly in the background, I got to also enjoy watching the color changes in the sky.
And we walked back to the van, we enjoyed the view of the State House gleaming in the setting sun.
As we drove out of Boston, we got to see a very dramatic full moon rising through the dark clouds. We had hoped to go out to dinner in Boston, which is our tradition, but due to the threat of Omicron, we cancelled our reservation at Fire and Ice and had a wonderful sushi dinner at home. After dinner, I helped Sam roll the cookie dough he made last night to make Chocolate Krinkles. Messy to make as the dough was very sticky, but delicious cookies which brought back memories for Jed as his grandmother used to make these same cookies. He doesn’t remember her dough being as sticky. He checked her recipe and it was the same as the one Sam used except his called for oil and Jed’s grandmother’s called for butter. Maybe we’ll try another batch with butter.
