St Martin’s Festival

Today we celebrated St. Martin’s festival at my daughters' school.

For readers who have never experienced a lantern walk it goes something like this:
Students (K – grade 3 or so) make lanterns in class or at home
Gather at the school at dusk or after dark
Light lanterns – yes real fire
(some kids even have lit torches like St. Martin's sword)
Live music
Wander through town or forest (here we do forest and fields)
Singing traditional songs for the day and songs about lanterns
Gather at bonfire
More singing
Drink tea, eat bread, or other treats
Play of St. Martin
Fini

It was during the whole eating, drinking, standing around the bonfire talking that I began to feel okay about this whole process of losing our things. I think singing in the dark is therapeutic especially if you’re singing with a large group of people and even more so if enthusiastic kids are part of the group. The whole idea of St. Martin is that he gave half of his cloak to a starving, freezing beggar on a cold winter night. And St. Martin’s fest is about bringing light (good deeds & social interaction) into a time of darkness (winter, less hours of daylight, more seclusion).

I didn’t have my camera and I often think I’m a better photographer without one. [The best pictures are the ones you never take]. I studied the scene as a photographer capturing the photos I would have taken. In my mind, I recorded the children close to the fire, red cheeked and bundled up and the tiny two-year-old reaching into the bread sack. I memorized the crowd of people singing and realized, “I can bring my camera next year.”

Because it isn’t what we HAVE that provides memories but the things we DO.

My children will remember St. Martin’s fest because we’ve celebrated it nearly every year since my oldest was 3. They will remember the songs because we sing them every year. They already know how to make three kinds of lanterns because we make them every year.

Tradition goes beyond belongings. And I hope with time spent honoring tradition that my children will welcome winter’s darkness and remember that it is a time to share, socialize –bring light, if you will - even if there comes a time when we live in a community that doesn’t celebrate St. Martin’s Day.