Song and dance

Around the date 13th of January is the time of "dancing out Christmas", removing  all Christmas decorations from the Christmas tree and in your home. Usually there is a party for the kids with candy and dancing around the tree for the last time before throwing the tree out. Sometimes there are musicians present and I was asked to organise some music for an event close by. I invited some friends and we've made a temporary band with violin, accordion, guitar and  tuba. The repertoar is very simple, containing the usual songs we do for Christmas but I thought it would be fun to have more instruments this time. The tradition of ring-dancing around the tree is from the turn of the late 18hundreds, imported largely from Germany and the songs are mostly about giving children a role model for how to behave and how to meet girls, usually set in the old rural society, learning about how to sow, wash clothes and all the sort of things nobody cares about anymore, except for two celebrations every year -Christmas and Mid-summer. Conveniently, it's more or less the same songs.

 During the meeting today to organise it, we found out that there probably won't be any, or very few children present. This is a celebration for elderly people with rheumatism so the energy is going to be pretty low on the movement side of things. We hope they will sing along though and to give them some good memories and music.