You are invited to a Christmas Feast!

Whether it’s the eighth, ninth or tenth day of Christmas when you sit down here, we hope you will enjoy the food, the drink and the music.
 

In celebrating the birth of Jesus at Christmas, the early church “Christianized” pagan festivals celebrating the return of the sun after the winter solstice. The Episcopal Church, like many others, follows the old tradition that begins the celebration on Christmas Day and continues it through January 5th, “Twelfth Night.” On the hollowing day the Feast of the Epiphany begins a new season in the church calendar, commemorating the arrival of the Wise Men (traditionally identified as three kings) and the manifestation (epiphaneia in Greek) of Christ’s divinity to the world.

We do not know how long music has been a part of the celebration of Christmas, but it has surely been well over a thousand years. Before the CD, before the gramophone, before the piano, before the harpsichord, minstrels roamed the countries of Europe, singing, playing music, and performing tricks. Besides these professional entertainers there were many amateurs. Composers and performers came from the ranks of royalty and nobility as well as from the common people. Whether you think of them as wandering minstrels or feasting aristocrats, our costumed singers are here to add the pleasures of sight and hearing to the pleasure of taste at this banquet.