If you see local youths worse for wear with Christmas merriment, perhaps they are just keeping up Manx tradition...

Before the Victorians reformed it into a time of piety and morality, the Christmas period was a time of relaxing and letting go.

In the Isle of Man it brought about what was known as the Kegeesh Ommidjagh -the foolish fortnight.

All work stopped on December 21, also known as Oie’l Thomase Doo, and the partying began.

’There is not a barn unoccupied the whole twelve days’ we learn from 1731, with dances happening all over the island, where young men and women would sneak out to the hedgerows so they could better enjoy their ’close celebrations of the festival’.

This was also the time for the Whiteboys.

This 200-or-so year old nonsense play about saints killing each other before being resurrected to sing and dance is on the streets again this year.

These days the collections go to charity, rather than to the players’ beer fund!

More anarchic entertainment was provided by the mollag bands.

Groups of young lads roamed the towns making ’a rare din’ singing, dancing and playing homemade instruments, carrying mollags, which were inflated sheep’s bladders, with which they hit anyone who got too close.

The aim was to make money, but they were perhaps hounding it out of people more than receiving willing donations.

In the home, the Kissing Bush hung from the rafters. The hoop of decorated holly and ivy gave you the licence to kiss anyone under it.

In church was the Oie’ll Verree service which took place on Christmas Eve.

Here the singing of carols was accompanied by young women throwing peas at young men.

After the service came a trip to the pub for ale spiced with pepper before the young men walked the women home and were sometimes invited in as the parents slept aboveâ?¦

On December 26, on St Stephen’s Day, or Boxing Day, came Hunt the Wren, which involved more music and dancing, and then the Kegeesh Ommidjagh was rounded off on January 6, the Twelfth Night, with two of the most strange customs of all.

Amidst the final drinking and dancing there was the ’Cutting off the Fiddler’s Head’, where the fiddler lay his head on a woman’s lap and made prophesies of who would pair with whom over the coming year.

But these festivities were interrupted by the Laare Vane, a person hidden under a sheet wearing a horse’s head.

This ’White Mare’ would go around attacking people snapping its jaws until it was chased from the room.

There has long been an honourable tradition of a foolish Christmas in the Isle of Man, and so we wish you one too this year!

Nollick ghennal as blein vie noa!

by James Franklin

Online and Educational Resources Officer

www.culturevannin.im