One of our newer family traditions during the holiday season is to travel up to Cleveland to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, a breathtakingly beautiful Gothic cathedral built in the style of the old English Mediaeval cathedrals, complete with a clerestory, a nave, two aisles, a transept and a large apse, resulting in the shape of a cross, the common design of Mediaeval cathedrals and churches. It was built around 1907 by Cleveland architect Charles Schweinfurth, who built many of the mansions once lived in by Cleveland's wealthiest citizens, as well as other beautiful Gothic churches throughout the city. During the Christmas holiday season, Trinity puts on a delightful Boar's Head and Yule Log pageant, where participants dress in Mediaeval costumes and present a period pageant celebrating the presentation of the Boar's Head and the lighting of the Yule Log. According to the program, this tradition can be traced back to at least 1340 where it was presented in the dining hall of Oxford College and has remained a tradition pretty much ever since. The pageant consists of song, smell and sound, and it begins with a gorgeous fanfare on the cathedral's organ, accompanied by a brass choir, which fills the church with the most magnificent sound! The church lights are dimmed, and a recording of Gregorian chant is played as actors dressed as monks light the candles that are along the nave and transept, creating a meditative atmosphere before the festivities of the Boar's Head and Yule Log pageant begin.
Next comes a parade of men dressed as Elizabethan Beefeaters, who march stately through the cathedral as a prelude to what is to come next. This whole affair demands audience participation, as we are asked to sing along with each of the people who come and present their part of the pageant. Usually, the opening number features the song Good King Wenceslas, and actors playing the good King and his page sing their parts of the song and the audience sings theirs. The quality of the singers is always exceptionally high and they always sound so wonderful. The cathedral filled with the sound of all of us singing along only adds to the majestic sound of the organ, the brass choir and the audience filling the entire space with sound! Once the King Wenceslas song is completed, the next part of the pageant begins, and that is the singing of the Ladies Court, who sing a beautiful and haunting melody as they process from the back of the cathedral to the front. It's simply gorgeous and sounds downright angelic and is a briefly serious moment in the whole gaity of the pageant. They sing a cappella, unaccompanied, in slightly dimmed light that is illuminated by candles, setting again a quiet and contemplative atmosphere before a more jolly group comes in and changes the tone of things, this being "The Woodsmen", usually portrayed by children pulling a Yule Log ridden by one youngster ringing a bell as the audience sings "Deck the Halls". They are followed by "The Waits", who sing "Here We Come a'Caroling". Then a free will offering is taken to help support this whole production. Actors portraying Mary and Joseph come next, complete with a real donkey, and then come the shepherds come to adore the baby Jesus, complete with real sheep. Usually the sheep express their displeasure by bleating loudly, only this time, the donkey brayed rather boisterously, and it was hard not to break down laughing at what is supposed to be such a solemn moment in the pageant.
The Three Kings come in next, adding frankincense to the whole mixture of sight and sound, and the entire cathedral is filled with the heady scent of this lovely fragrance. Several more songs are sung before the whole thing comes to a close, the candles are extinguished, and a sprite who opens the whole ceremony by greeting the Dean of the Cathedral comes again to close the play and skip out of the church, hand in hand with the Dean. All in all, it's a lovely and wonderful event to attend during the holiday season, made even better by the fact that it is free and open to the public as a Christmas gift to the people from Trinity Cathedral. It's something that makes our holiday even more special as we have begun to make this a family tradition. Of course, in our family, it's often been said that if we do something once, "It's a tradition!" Having done this now for three or four years in a row, it has most decidedly become a tradition that Christmas simply would not be the same without. After the pageant, another tradition that we began only a year or two ago was to go to dinner at a lovely little Vietnamese restaurant called, oddly, "#1 Pho", at East 31st and Superior, in Cleveland's version of "Chinatown". We did so last night, with four friends along who came to the pageant as well, and we all had a lovely time together. Old neighbors and siblings Caroline and Blake and their respective spouses were the four friends we ate dinner with, and we talked, laughed and had a lovely time together reminiscing and catching up on what's new in everyone's lives. I hated to see the evening end but everyone was growing weary as the night grew later, and so we reluctantly parted ways and returned home, where I fell asleep on my sofa until sometime around 3 a.m., when I finally woke up, turned out the lights and went to bed, cuddling up in my new cozy comforter on what was an unusually warm and balmy evening for a late December day. But that warmth won't last long. Tonight is supposed to drop down into more seasonable temperatures in the upper 20's.
One of our newer family traditions during the holiday season is to travel up to Cleveland to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, a breathtakingly beautiful Gothic cathedral built in the style of the old English Mediaeval cathedrals, complete with a clerestory, a nave, two aisles, a transept and a large apse, resulting in the shape of a cross, the common design of Mediaeval cathedrals and churches. It was built around 1907 by Cleveland architect Charles Schweinfurth, who built many of the mansions once lived in by Cleveland's wealthiest citizens, as well as other beautiful Gothic churches throughout the city. During the Christmas holiday season, Trinity puts on a delightful Boar's Head and Yule Log pageant, where participants dress in Mediaeval costumes and present a period pageant celebrating the presentation of the Boar's Head and the lighting of the Yule Log. According to the program, this tradition can be traced back to at least 1340 where it was presented in the dining hall of Oxford College and has remained a tradition pretty much ever since. The pageant consists of song, smell and sound, and it begins with a gorgeous fanfare on the cathedral's organ, accompanied by a brass choir, which fills the church with the most magnificent sound! The church lights are dimmed, and a recording of Gregorian chant is played as actors dressed as monks light the candles that are along the nave and transept, creating a meditative atmosphere before the festivities of the Boar's Head and Yule Log pageant begin.
Next comes a parade of men dressed as Elizabethan Beefeaters, who march stately through the cathedral as a prelude to what is to come next. This whole affair demands audience participation, as we are asked to sing along with each of the people who come and present their part of the pageant. Usually, the opening number features the song Good King Wenceslas, and actors playing the good King and his page sing their parts of the song and the audience sings theirs. The quality of the singers is always exceptionally high and they always sound so wonderful. The cathedral filled with the sound of all of us singing along only adds to the majestic sound of the organ, the brass choir and the audience filling the entire space with sound! Once the King Wenceslas song is completed, the next part of the pageant begins, and that is the singing of the Ladies Court, who sing a beautiful and haunting melody as they process from the back of the cathedral to the front. It's simply gorgeous and sounds downright angelic and is a briefly serious moment in the whole gaity of the pageant. They sing a cappella, unaccompanied, in slightly dimmed light that is illuminated by candles, setting again a quiet and contemplative atmosphere before a more jolly group comes in and changes the tone of things, this being "The Woodsmen", usually portrayed by children pulling a Yule Log ridden by one youngster ringing a bell as the audience sings "Deck the Halls". They are followed by "The Waits", who sing "Here We Come a'Caroling". Then a free will offering is taken to help support this whole production. Actors portraying Mary and Joseph come next, complete with a real donkey, and then come the shepherds come to adore the baby Jesus, complete with real sheep. Usually the sheep express their displeasure by bleating loudly, only this time, the donkey brayed rather boisterously, and it was hard not to break down laughing at what is supposed to be such a solemn moment in the pageant. 
The Three Kings come in next, adding frankincense to the whole mixture of sight and sound, and the entire cathedral is filled with the heady scent of this lovely fragrance. Several more songs are sung before the whole thing comes to a close, the candles are extinguished, and a sprite who opens the whole ceremony by greeting the Dean of the Cathedral comes again to close the play and skip out of the church, hand in hand with the Dean. All in all, it's a lovely and wonderful event to attend during the holiday season, made even better by the fact that it is free and open to the public as a Christmas gift to the people from Trinity Cathedral. It's something that makes our holiday even more special as we have begun to make this a family tradition. Of course, in our family, it's often been said that if we do something once, "It's a tradition!" Having done this now for three or four years in a row, it has most decidedly become a tradition that Christmas simply would not be the same without. After the pageant, another tradition that we began only a year or two ago was to go to dinner at a lovely little Vietnamese restaurant called, oddly, "#1 Pho", at East 31st and Superior, in Cleveland's version of "Chinatown". We did so last night, with four friends along who came to the pageant as well, and we all had a lovely time together. Old neighbors and siblings Caroline and Blake and their respective spouses were the four friends we ate dinner with, and we talked, laughed and had a lovely time together reminiscing and catching up on what's new in everyone's lives. I hated to see the evening end but everyone was growing weary as the night grew later, and so we reluctantly parted ways and returned home, where I fell asleep on my sofa until sometime around 3 a.m., when I finally woke up, turned out the lights and went to bed, cuddling up in my new cozy comforter on what was an unusually warm and balmy evening for a late December day. But that warmth won't last long. Tonight is supposed to drop down into more seasonable temperatures in the upper 20's. 
1 comment:
That's a lovely description of the Boar's Head pageant. It was fun to see Caroline and Blake, too.
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