When Emma Slipp was a teenager, her family started practising an unusual Christmas ritual that set their holiday revelries apart from those of their neighbours.
Were mummers, the Vancouver actress told the audience at The Flame: Holiday Season Edition storytelling event last month at The Cultch.
Mummering, an old-fashioned custom used to usher in the new year which Slipp likens to Christmas carolling and trick-or-treating on crack is still practised in Newfoundland. Mummers don outlandish costumes, cover their faces, disguise their voices, noisily burst into unsuspecting homes and perform plays for the bewildered residents.
When the performance is over, it is assumed that you will be given booze, and then be joined by all the people in the house as you go to the next house. Newfies love this roving drunken costume party.
But she is from Nova Scotia. No one had ever heard of mummering until the year that I was 15 and my very theatrically minded mother decided that mummering was going to be our new family tradition.
For their inaugural mummering tour, Slipps family presented Saint George and the Dragon (her father played the damsel in distress). The last stop was the home of the Wade family, who had a teenaged son.
So that house was the last place on earth I wanted to go with my father prancing around in a tutu, Slipp says.
They entered the house, drums pounding, whistles blaring, and it seemed, for one relieving moment, that no one was home. But then my father opens the door to the TV room and a huge cloud of smoke hits us in the face, Slipp recalls.
There, eating munchies and watching The Trailer Park Boys, was the Wade boy and his friend. We had to proceed with our medieval revel and they just sat there, stunned and very stoned, and I wanted to die.
Back home, Slipp retreated to her bedroom, humiliated. Moments later, she saw an RCMP cruiser pull into the driveway. Seems a bunch of masked freaks just made two poor boys watch a play, Slipp overheard the officer tell her mother.
Fortunately, no one was arrested for breaking and entering. It turns out that the officer was a proud Newfoundlander, and when he heard the boys story and then matched our plates to their description, he just laughed at them and said, Youve been mummered, boys.
Slipp regrets that she will not be home for Christmas this year. I will be here, in this big damp city, wishing that I was dressed in a gold lamé gown, with a flowery pillowcase over my head, committing minor felonies with my dear family of Christmas terrorists.
The Flame: Holiday Season Editionispresented with Metro Vancouver as part of itsCreate Memories, Not Garbagecampaign. Watch the performances on Shaw TV Channel 4 on Friday, Dec. 14 at 1:30 pm; Sunday, Dec. 16 at 2:30 pm; and Tuesday, Dec. 18 at 5:30 and 11:30 pm.
