On Sunday, I went to a Christmas party called “Wassail” (rhymes with fossil, or if you’re in my choir, you call it “waffle”. Local community members call it “cookie day” – you will see why). It was run by the Monteverde Friends Meeting.
But before the wassail, there was a Christmas Program, which the Quakers have been holding for 71 years! During the program, community members performed different acts about Christmas. There were some songs like Silent Night, Angels We have Heard on High and readings and a little play.
Our family was the first act and we led a song: the 12 days of Christmas, Monteverde edition.
We got many friends young and old to participate. Each person was assigned an animal, each representing one of the 12 days. Some of them had masks that my dad made, some had stuffy animals, and some had other types of costumes.
When we got to their day, they came out onto the stage and performed an action like their animal. The sloth was very slow, the quetzal flapped her wings, and the hummingbird used a stick as their beak and fluttered around in a zig-zag way like hummingbirds fly.
Right after that, my choir was the next up. We sang a song called “Prince of Peace”. My solo was up first, even before the first chorus. I was shaking internally but everyone said afterword that I did great. I took a couple of deep breaths and I think that helped make it so my voice didn’t tremble.
The last act of the program was the kitchen sink orchestra. It had some string instruments, a keyboard, some woodwinds and a trumpet and a saxophone. There were also some unusual instruments like slid whistles, kazoos, maracas, a washboard, a triangle played with a metal spoon. The cymbals at the end were two pot lids! Everyone was wearing kitchen aprons too! They played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Wassail song.
Then, row-by-row, led by our friend Richard playing the saxophone, we all paraded to the kitchen where there were a ton of cookies waiting. Everyone who came to the wassail made 12 cookies to contribute and it was quite a spread! At the beginning, everyone took 5 cookies and a mug of wassail – a warm fruit juice punch. The cookies were yummy and the wassail was tasty.
Some of us went back for seconds: we brought ours home with us to eat on the airplane on our way to Chicago for Christmas.
Overall, wassail was fun. There were yummy treats and I got over singing my first solo ever!
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