IT’S MUMMERS SEASON!
IT’S MUMMERS season! Mummers is an Irish Christmas-time house-visiting tradition involving a group of friends or family who dress in disguise and visit homes of their neighbours & community during the twelve days of Christmas. If the mummers are welcomed into a house, they will sing, dance, play music and tell stories. The hosts must guess the mummers’ identities before offering them food or drink. They may poke and prod the mummers or ask them questions. To make this a challenge for the hosts, the mummers may stuff their costumes, cross-dress & wear silly disguises. Once the mummers have been identified, they remove their disguises, spend some time with. the hosts, before they travel as a group to the next home.
This week at Edwina Guckian’s Áirc Damhsa Dance Club Sligo, the children are visiting 20 hospitals and nursing homes across 7 counties as the mummers. They are singing, dancing, and playing music and lots of the patients are joining in with them.
Mummering was a huge tradition across Co. Sligo and the west of Ireland but it has died out over the past number of years. It would be great to see it having a huge revival and spreading the Christmas cheer. So get your friends and family together, does up in disguise and gift your neighbours with a song, a tune or a dance.