Have you ever happened to participate in Christmas mummery?
Categories: Arvid Ratnieks
Oh, I have happened a lot – since I was a child. Usually, it was not organized. Usually is happened like this – either in some house, or at some neighbour’s, or mainly, if we were very small, usually also elderly people joined in mummery, I mean, grown-up people, not such old men as me. And little kids were very eager to join the mummers. Various masks were prepared. Those masks were not made on purpose, it was sufficient to turn out a fur coat, to tie a rope around, to take some stick or a broom, and cover the head with – whatever could be used to mask oneself.
I remember that once mummers had come at one neighbour’s, where we were celebrating, and there was a man who had a pot with the holes for the eyes on his head. For those who participated in mummery, the main principle was – to run into some house and then see if the hosts could recognize who the person was. In this respect, people shoved wads or something else in their mouths or put in between the teeth so that they could not be recognized. Or they tried not to speak much.
The mummers were always treated. They were not really fed, but they were always treated to some drink. And there were the years, when you were sitting at home, but people knew that you’d like to participate; therefore, before going, people ran around 3-4 houses to gather a bigger company. And then we went mumming, I now remember, we usually covered some 4 or three kilometres every year. Usually, let’s say, if you started in the centre, then you went either to one or the other end. It was impossible to do that all night through. In all the homes it was already more or less known, which house could be entered, in which house you’d be treated better. And usually we attended those houses, in which some celebration was known to take place. People gathered in one place. Then, for a kid it was very interesting. We were losing mittens and hats. My first leather gloves were found only in spring in some garden.
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Researcher: Dr. philol. Valentīns Lukaševičs, Daugavpils Universitāte
