In the darkest days of the year, it is comforting to gather with our loved ones to celebrate the Yuletide. The presence of family members, close and distant give us a sense of belonging and a sense of our individual place in the great generational chain. Our family traditions and cultural rituals are fun and reassuring. They help to banish misfortune and offer hope for the coming year.

We think of our modern celebrations as “American” because they express our sense not only of who we are but also where we are. But while our traditions might be rooted in our genealogy, they are almost certainly not attached to our geography. In truth, very few of us can trace our family origins to this place. We all came from somewhere else. Our forbears, near or distant had to leave a home, near or distant, before settling here.

In this Revels, we take you to Queenstown, County Cork, where in 1905 alone, over 50 thousand Irish embarked on a voyages to new lives in America. The land they were leaving behind had been visited by darkness many times over hundreds of years yet their music, stories and customs while shaped by adversity and sorrow display an irrepressible strain of hope.

All of the many emigrants who left the British Isles in this era, faced a similar fundamental choice: what does one take and what does one leave behind? Ultimately, one takes what will be most useful, be it warm clothing, kitchen utensils, a necessary trade - or even an old fiddle or a tall story.

Their songs and dances, the artifacts of Celtic culture were packed up and brought along, because when all is said and done, it is a sense of where we come from, and a sense of who we are as a community that allows us to face the uncertainties of the future with courage and hope.

There is a traditional Irish saying, often expressed in times of adversity: “We never died a winter yet”. This simple but basic expression of faith in survival - the surety that the cold and dark will pass and that hope will shine anew - is a message we all need to hear again, this year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

David Parr, Artistic Director