Old & New

Yuletide…   Check.
New Year… Check.
Liver Inflamed…   Check.

And well worth it, too.  I rang in the New Year with friends – as it should be – and spent a little time reminiscing of my friends back in Minnesota. 

I recalled the days of auld  when… 

**queue dream sequence squiggles and harp runs**

During the yuletide a gang of us wouldst traipse about in garish garb and beg sweets and coin from the local gentry. Mumming, we called it.  (Much like caroling only with a play rather than a song.)  And we had quite a grand time of it too.

Masquerades at New Year’s Eve with wine and song and games all leading up to a kiss from your sweetie (or, perhaps borrowing another’s sweetie for the moment) and removing our masks to discover the Dark Man at the last stroke.  Then we would resume the singing and dancing and carrying-on until the wee hours.

Yes, I know I sound like a promotion for some PBS Masterpiece Classic but that’s the way of it when a good number of your friends are thespians and Renaissance Festival re-enactors.
And, a great lot of fun they are!

**end dream sequence squiggles and harp run in reverse**

My, how traditions have changed a bit since those days. 

I no longer play in a mumming group – though I’ve thought it might be time to see if I can find a few lively souls who might want to chance incarceration for showing up on doorsteps in masks and begging. 

And, for the last 2 years a small group of us have started a new tradition of renting a house in the Galena Territories then making our boisterous, somewhat inebriated and rather comical way from local tavern to local tavern on New Year’s Eve EVE.  (With a small break for music…provided by me at one of aforementioned taverns.)  Thus avoiding the much more crowded and dangerous traditional Eve night.  Then on New Year’s Eve day we have all day to sit around nursing our hangovers, watching football, playing board games, grazing on enough food to feed a small nation and falling asleep well before the “ball” has dropped in NYC (11:00PM CST). 

Out with the auld and in with the new?  Well, yes and no.  It is always exciting to create new traditions, but that doesn’t mean I will ever stop my tradition of remembering ALL of my friends and our fine times together.