There are times in our life when we need warmth and have no wood to bring to the fire. Those times are very real and, in those times, the warmth of that fire may be the only thing that sustains us through the night. We all may need such a thing many times in our life. There’s a time when people must be welcome to sit, no fire in hand, and nothing to contribute and just get warm.
But, if we’re lucky, that’s not most days.
Most days, something else is called for.
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I visited a friend today who has spent twenty-five years practicing village-making in the trenches on a real property with real people. The land has been visited by people from around the world.
A lot of people came to the land to get warm. But very few brought wood.
This is tourism in a nutshell. We come to get our ‘exotic experience’ and then we leave, leaving nothing behind but our money and an economy a bit more dependent on tourists like us.
Shortly after arriving in Duncan, I went to a small workshop at the local art gallery focused on indigenous and settler relations.
I’d brought gifts for the elder who I knew would be there.
Afterwards, I went up to shake his hand and thank him for his good words and to offer him some gifts. I told him that I didn’t know how long I’d be here but that I’d try to be useful while I was here. Useful to the place. Useful to his people. We’ll see how I do.
For my ancestors, and likely yours too, it was almost unthinkable to go visit someone without bringing a gift, however small. Now that could be something you made, a bottle of wine, a candle or a good story to share. But you brought something.
Even in my grandparents generation, when you went to a party you’d have a ‘party piece’. That might be a song you could sing, play on piano or a good joke or story to tell or a strange body trick. Anything. Just so that you’d have something to offer.
“The important thing is not that you sing well,” says my friend Shannon MacMullin often, quoting an elder in the Gaelic community of Nova Scotia. “But that you have a song and that you sing it.”
The party piece is a shard of a much larger clay vessel of the ceilidh (a Gaelic word meaning something like ‘visit’ or ‘party’ or ‘gathering’). On the cold, Winter nights, you’d all gather together at someone’s home or a shared space and spent the night in the warmth of each other’s company, throwing logs on the fire as you went. As the stories were being told,
In those days, and still in many places in the Old Country, people had dozens of songs, stories and poems each that they could recite off by heart.
“No less important than the stories are the contexts in which they were told and the gifted individuals who learned them and passed down. Although the physical environments in Cape Breton differed from that of the western Highlands, the Gaelic social context for performance and transmission of the oral traditions, transferred virtually intact, proved ideal for encouraging community cohesion and and fostering verbal arts in the backwoods settlements of the new world. From field evidence amassed since the early 1960’s, Gaelic storytelling sessions, on various scales, were a staple of entertainment on the island wherever the language was spoken. The centre of the evenings social gatherings, and therefore the main intellectual institution of the rural Gaels, was the taigh céilidh (the céilidh house), a household in the community where people of all ages would gather in the evenings, particularly in the windr, to pass the time in conversation and informal entertainment… The evening would begin with casual conversation and the exchange of important local news before the main entertainment. It was usually the custom to offer visitors food or drink, depending on what was available.” - John Shaw, The Blue Mountain
“[In Cape Breton] as in the rest of Gaeldom, the main occasions for the recitation of tales were reserved for the long winter nights. The description of those present quietly engaged in their evening tasks of sewing, knitting, repairing equipment, and so on, could come from any of the céilidh settings of the nineteenth century published by collectors visiting the Outer Isles. The customary céilidh sequence given here, starting with a detailed discussion - with full commentary - of the local news and progressing to the recitation of tales, was well known elsewhere. As ikn all Gaelic communities, the taigh-faire or wake-house was a favourite venue for story-tellers, who often performed until daylight.” - John Shaw, Tales Until Dawn
And so you can see how far we’ve fallen. Our ancestors all had some version of the ceilidh. This collapsed into having a party piece. These days no one has a party piece. But they have their phone which has funny TikTok videos they can share. And, worse, we have ‘the audience’.
At a ceilidh, there was no audience. There were no spectators. Everyone had something to contribute and was expected to. The role of the fear an taighe or bean and taighe (man or woman of the house) was to play the host, inviting contributions from all who were there, starting with the younger or less skillful ones and then the evening might end with some of the finer musicians or storytellers. But there was no audience. There was, instead, a community.
And everyone brought logs to that fire. Some brought kindling. Some brought immense logs. Everyone brought something. No one was coming only to be on the receiving end of a show from a performer.
Those are modern.
And they make us so lonely.
Instead, try this, the next time you go to a gathering, bring a physical gift and bring a story, a poem, a song or a joke. One you’ve put work into memorizing and, when the time is right, share it.
Or, better yet, host a ceilidh and invite everyone to bring something they’ve memorized by heart. Maybe something from their ancestral homelands.
Even better, invite them to bring some project they can work on with their hands and, if they don’t have something, maybe you do.
But no more habitually and chronically going to the fire without wood. When we do that as a way of being, unthinkingly, when we tourist the world, we take away warmth with us and leave the cold of our selfishness behind us and leave that fire and those around it feeling used and discarded so we could have our latest cool experience.
Community is not a consumable commodity.
The fire of culture needs to be fed.
Bring some food.
Wow...wow...wow... I love this Tad, thank you! I was born and raise, and currently live, in Ireland and can say we were always taught that you never go empty handed to another persons home or party or whatever is happening. If you went without a gift for some reason... perhaps it was last minute or for some other reason, I always remember hearing people say as they were welcomed in the door... 'Well now, I'm afraid I'm coming with my arms as long as each other', meaning there was no gift in one...
We also, thankfully, grew up having sing songs, sessions and were often put standing on the hearth of the fireplace to sing a song or say a poem or share something... sadly this tradition has begun to die and dwindle with those who kept it alive.. theres a skill to being a party maker or host... one I admittedly took for granted and never realised was a 'skill or talent' until my Dad passed away..
He was always life and soul of a party, he brought people together, always had his guitar, story to tell or a song to sound the beginning of a night with ... it was only after he passed away that I realised the gift of his energy, the gift of his ability to connect people and create space... that alone, now seeing this as a superpower, at least warrants a token of appreciation when we visit a home or venue of a home maker, connector, host or creator of community spaces...
Thank you very much for this Tad. You have articulated an emptiness that I have carried with me since childhood, as I watched the world turn from one era to another. In the 60's we lived a slow life and entertained ourselves with bad jokes, interesting stories, physical challenges and games, and singing when we were bored. I watched these "roles" go to professionals over time, leaving us ordinary untrained beings too embarrassed with our expressions to dare share them with others. And that is when the light and joy of family gatherings started dying for us.
I will be sharing this blog with my kids and my siblings and their kids and request that everyone bring something, however small, to contribute to our Family Christmas gathering at Grammas this year. We number over 30 now and need something like this to open and bring our hearts into communion again.
<3