I won't keep talking about the Dickens Faire, I promise, but there is just this one more entry. It seems like it was just the *first* day of the Faire (and that was only a few blog posts ago, and now it was the last day of the Faire on Sunday. One the good things about the Faire: it has an eternal "now" quality to it. They really go to great lengths to give the whole thing a theater atmosphere - living historical theater - with lighting and sets and little tricks of the stage in order to make it seem like it's always Christmas Eve in London.
In fact, when you walk in (at certain times), they have a snow machine above you with a blower, so that the first thing you see what looks like actual snow on the Great Concourse with its shopfronts, passers-by and great Christmas tree. And, yes, it's magical. I'll admit it. I'm for magic, even if a little sentimental. But it's not just the snow...they keep the light at that magical hour of dusk - think of London when the gas lamps are just being lit, but there's a hint of cold sunshine left. And that's the conceit of the Faire - hours, days of Christmas Eve. For four to five weekends, hours per day, it's Christmas Eve; and - even better - a Christmas Eve dance, which is the very best way one can possibly spend Christmas, right?
You get used to it, though - you get used to Christmas Eve taking place over days and weeks. So much so that when you get - as one does in the *real* world - just...well...ONE Christmas Eve, that seems far too insufficient to meet one's Christmas capacity. The Dickens Faire stretches you out, stretches out your idea of reality and time and Christmas. It's always over much too soon, and all the regulars say to each other, as they are having their final waltzes together, can you believe it's the last day? And we all have the same response: "Ah, but it will be next year before you know it."
Because the perpetuality of the Faire goes from year to year as well. I first went in 2001, and have been going regularly for at least seven or so years. It comes back every year (which I am supremely grateful for), like the seasons, seemingly. It really grows on one. The regulars are part of what it makes it so great, because they - from the live corseted models in the Dark Garden windows or Cuthbert's Tea Shoppe or Mad Sal's - are back annually. They are reliable. There's the men I dance with and the women's whose costumes I have admired or maybe (by this point) memorized. There they are, and like a family or any other community, they grow on you. So the Faire has this timelessness, this repetition that's also constantly new, and that makes it sort of...like Christmas Zen. And what could be better than THAT?
It is also a primitive form of time travel. One starts to have thoughts and ideas that must have been very similar to those people who lived 150 years ago: oh no, is my hoop skirt getting too old (my hoops were starting to poke out!)? Uh oh, I have a hole in the thumb of my best glove. Heavens, where is my hat? Ah, what relief to finally take off this corset (they are surprisingly comfortable - for what they are - but it can get less so after many hours). Those kind of thoughts - you think them, and then you realize that you are thinking things that most people are not - unless they are method acting or something. Only you are thinking of them for real - because they are relevant and happening to you.
This is charming, to me. Of all the possible supernatural things - from telepathy to invisibility to the ability to fly - I have always wanted to time travel. Time travel is the most appealing of all day dreams and idle desires. I especially am fascinated by the past - for some people, it's the future, but I can't imagine the future very well, and it's too abstract for me. But the past - I mean, LOOK at it. Go to any good museum and look at it - from the costumes to the applied and fine arts, from the music to the architecture: it's gorgeous. It's lush and marvelous and richly detailed - and all so foreign, so unattainable, so untouchable. But not so at the Faire! It lives and breathes - or, pretty close.
It's also a bit like living in a novel - I mean, the whole thing is based on Dickens in general and A Christmas Carol in particular. I'm an avid reader of Victorian novels - from Thackeray to Trollope, from Oscar Wilde to Thomas Hardy, I've read almost all of them (although I have never, sad to say, been able to get into Dickens, except for A Christmas Carol) - and I've desperately wanted to have some of those emotions had by young ladies in those novels. I can't help it. I've was raised with Laura Ingalls Wilder (published in the 30's but written about the her childhood in the 1870's) and then went right on to The Little Princess (1905) and then into the granddaddy of them all, Little Women (1860's). This is what I grew up on.
So no wonder I love the Faire - history, drama, novels, costumes, plus it's extremely romantic, to boot. The men look terrific. Clothes today are boring and a bit depressing, but the Victorian clothes (and hairstyles) can really make most men look better, and some men look great; it's especially good for those men that might not otherwise look that way. And the women too...many of us make our gowns (I do), and we get to have that exciting feeling of debuting a new outfit, sewn and designed by ourselves. Men compliment us, and it's satisfying, because we made it ourselves. I spent hours on the outfit I usually wear; I thought it up, and I sewed it from start to finish, some of it by hand, painstakingly (because I honestly don't like to sew), and I can't help but I must be having some of the same feeling as some country girl, going to her first barn dance in her brand new cotton Sunday dress, from a calico Mother asked Father to pick up last time he went to the town, the pattern taken from something Mama remembered seeing in a mail-order magazine Back East.
So it's not like that, I know...but it's pretty close. It's over for next year, and I'd be very sad if it weren't for the fact that actual Christmas is still coming. As they say in London, Happy Christmas!
In fact, when you walk in (at certain times), they have a snow machine above you with a blower, so that the first thing you see what looks like actual snow on the Great Concourse with its shopfronts, passers-by and great Christmas tree. And, yes, it's magical. I'll admit it. I'm for magic, even if a little sentimental. But it's not just the snow...they keep the light at that magical hour of dusk - think of London when the gas lamps are just being lit, but there's a hint of cold sunshine left. And that's the conceit of the Faire - hours, days of Christmas Eve. For four to five weekends, hours per day, it's Christmas Eve; and - even better - a Christmas Eve dance, which is the very best way one can possibly spend Christmas, right?
You get used to it, though - you get used to Christmas Eve taking place over days and weeks. So much so that when you get - as one does in the *real* world - just...well...ONE Christmas Eve, that seems far too insufficient to meet one's Christmas capacity. The Dickens Faire stretches you out, stretches out your idea of reality and time and Christmas. It's always over much too soon, and all the regulars say to each other, as they are having their final waltzes together, can you believe it's the last day? And we all have the same response: "Ah, but it will be next year before you know it."
Because the perpetuality of the Faire goes from year to year as well. I first went in 2001, and have been going regularly for at least seven or so years. It comes back every year (which I am supremely grateful for), like the seasons, seemingly. It really grows on one. The regulars are part of what it makes it so great, because they - from the live corseted models in the Dark Garden windows or Cuthbert's Tea Shoppe or Mad Sal's - are back annually. They are reliable. There's the men I dance with and the women's whose costumes I have admired or maybe (by this point) memorized. There they are, and like a family or any other community, they grow on you. So the Faire has this timelessness, this repetition that's also constantly new, and that makes it sort of...like Christmas Zen. And what could be better than THAT?
It is also a primitive form of time travel. One starts to have thoughts and ideas that must have been very similar to those people who lived 150 years ago: oh no, is my hoop skirt getting too old (my hoops were starting to poke out!)? Uh oh, I have a hole in the thumb of my best glove. Heavens, where is my hat? Ah, what relief to finally take off this corset (they are surprisingly comfortable - for what they are - but it can get less so after many hours). Those kind of thoughts - you think them, and then you realize that you are thinking things that most people are not - unless they are method acting or something. Only you are thinking of them for real - because they are relevant and happening to you.
This is charming, to me. Of all the possible supernatural things - from telepathy to invisibility to the ability to fly - I have always wanted to time travel. Time travel is the most appealing of all day dreams and idle desires. I especially am fascinated by the past - for some people, it's the future, but I can't imagine the future very well, and it's too abstract for me. But the past - I mean, LOOK at it. Go to any good museum and look at it - from the costumes to the applied and fine arts, from the music to the architecture: it's gorgeous. It's lush and marvelous and richly detailed - and all so foreign, so unattainable, so untouchable. But not so at the Faire! It lives and breathes - or, pretty close.
It's also a bit like living in a novel - I mean, the whole thing is based on Dickens in general and A Christmas Carol in particular. I'm an avid reader of Victorian novels - from Thackeray to Trollope, from Oscar Wilde to Thomas Hardy, I've read almost all of them (although I have never, sad to say, been able to get into Dickens, except for A Christmas Carol) - and I've desperately wanted to have some of those emotions had by young ladies in those novels. I can't help it. I've was raised with Laura Ingalls Wilder (published in the 30's but written about the her childhood in the 1870's) and then went right on to The Little Princess (1905) and then into the granddaddy of them all, Little Women (1860's). This is what I grew up on.
So no wonder I love the Faire - history, drama, novels, costumes, plus it's extremely romantic, to boot. The men look terrific. Clothes today are boring and a bit depressing, but the Victorian clothes (and hairstyles) can really make most men look better, and some men look great; it's especially good for those men that might not otherwise look that way. And the women too...many of us make our gowns (I do), and we get to have that exciting feeling of debuting a new outfit, sewn and designed by ourselves. Men compliment us, and it's satisfying, because we made it ourselves. I spent hours on the outfit I usually wear; I thought it up, and I sewed it from start to finish, some of it by hand, painstakingly (because I honestly don't like to sew), and I can't help but I must be having some of the same feeling as some country girl, going to her first barn dance in her brand new cotton Sunday dress, from a calico Mother asked Father to pick up last time he went to the town, the pattern taken from something Mama remembered seeing in a mail-order magazine Back East.
So it's not like that, I know...but it's pretty close. It's over for next year, and I'd be very sad if it weren't for the fact that actual Christmas is still coming. As they say in London, Happy Christmas!
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