Winter / Christmas Celebrations: Costumes & Costumed Figures

[Comfortably Numb]

That's a traditional Welsh Mari Lwyd wassailer with the hobbyhorse.

Thank heavens for that!

Your mind wanders and imagines all sorts of things...

You added: "I keep meaning to make one of those horse skulls".

Oh please, please do and post a picture.

 

[Analogue Boy]

Definitely looks like it and there's the crazy part... the background story apparently checks out and someone has seemingly obtained a bona-fide photograph - that's the house.

Delightfully Fortean thread this is and even resulted in the following image somehow coming up from copious, related online searches.

One has consummately no idea what on earth this is about...

View attachment 32230

That’s from a traditional event called ‘Wife Parade’ - a forerunner of coastal beauty contests. Here, we see see the wife is covered from the waist down and can’t be entered into the Knobbliest Knees Contest to win a double prize, so her sensible husband/handler has put her in for the more easily-won ‘Omelette Head’ competition where the top prize surely was awarded. Which is a win for the Patriarchy and her. She got the afternoon off kitchen duties.

 

[Analogue Boy]

That’s from a traditional event called ‘Wife Parade’ - a forerunner of coastal beauty contests. Here, we see see the wife is covered from the waist down and can’t be entered into the Knobbliest Knees Contest to win a double prize, so her sensible husband/handler has put her in for the more easily-won ‘Omelette Head’ competition where the top prize surely was awarded. Which is a win for the Patriarchy and her. She got the afternoon off kitchen duties.

It’s worth noting that now we have seen feminism, women no longer need to be paraded by men down the street on a lead with an omelette mask but instead inject their faces and tits and wear skimpy bikinis and parade themselves.
That is progress

 

[bugmum]

That's a traditional Welsh Mari Lwyd wassailer with the hobbyhorse.

I had the page zoomed in - can't be bothered to fetch my reading glasses - and as soon as I scrolled past the top of that photo, announced to myself (because I'm the only one on the room) "That's the Mari Lwyd". Imagine my pleasure as I reached the bottom of the post. I was hoping for some kind of gold star...?

 

[escargot]

Thank heavens for that!

Your mind wanders and imagines all sorts of things...

You added: "I keep meaning to make one of those horse skulls".

Oh please, please do and post a picture.

When the urge takes me I will make one! It will hopefully be like a real one but much lighter to carry. Photos will be shared.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Photos will be shared.

Deal!

You are actually touching on something I have personally come to embrace and advocate in my later years.

'Jist dae it!' ✓

 

[escargot]

Deal!

You are actually touching on something I have personally come to embrace and advocate in my later years.

'Jist dae it!' ✓

This is a helpful page -
(safe Shapeways link)
3-D Horse Skull Model

 

[IbisNibs]

There is a (perhaps very obscure) movie called A Walk with Love and Death from 1969; based on the novel by Hans Koningsberger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_with_Love_and_Death
It takes place during a peasant uprising in France, stars Anjelica Huston, among others, is in French (at least the version I saw) and has a scene (a very eerie scene) with displaced peasants parading across the countryside with a giant puppet like thing with a horse skull. It seems to be their new deity. (But my French isn't superb, so I could be mistaken as to the significance . . . )
One of my all time favorite films.

Alas, this has absolutely nothing to do with this thread. I think.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

... "That's the Mari Lwyd". Imagine my pleasure as I reached the bottom of the post. I was hoping for some kind of gold star...?

Came across this and thought of @escargot and yourself...

 

[Nemo]

There is a Cornish version of "Mari Lwyd" in Rick Stien's "A Cornish Xmas" (currently on BBC iplayer).

 

[Xanatic*]

Today in the Czech Republic they celebrate someone called Lutska or so. She would wander around with a big knife, threatening to cut open the belly of anyone not fasting before christmas.
The kids dress up for it, carrying a wooden knife.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Today in the Czech Republic they celebrate someone called Lutska or so. She would wander around with a big knife, threatening to cut open the belly of anyone not fasting before christmas.
The kids dress up for it, carrying a wooden knife.

The costumes and the bit about the knife come from two separate Czech winter / Xmas traditions.

The white costumes are associated with the Czech version of the St. Lucille / Lucia tradition (Advent; December 13 saint's day).

Lucie sips the night away
The last major figure of Advent was St. Lucy, born in 284 A.D. After refusing to wed, Lucy was sentenced to perform prostitution and ended up with her throat cut. The thirteenth of December, the feast day of St. Lucy, used to be the winter solstice at the time of the older Julian calendar. From that time a saying arose: “Lucy sips the night away but the day does not grow longer.” Spinning and plucking feathers were strictly prohibited on the feast day. Lucys, women in white coats with candles in their hands, walked around homes to see if anyone was violating the ban. Their faces were covered with a mask made of wood and paper similar to a stork’s beak and it made an unpleasant clicking sound. Lucys banged on doors and announced: “I’m coming, coming to sip the night away.”

https://www.visitczechrepublic.com/...f9420443/article/n-traditions-of-czech-advent

Here's another photo ...

SOURCE: http://deborahstearns.blogspot.com/2014/11/czech-holiday-costumes-customs-musaion.html

As far as I can tell the knife bit is associated with Perchta (aka Frau Perchta):

https://www.scribd.com/doc/17325747/Perchta-the-Belly-slitter-and-Her-Kin

Lest you think this is the creepiest Czech Advent tradition, let's not forget Perchta.

She wore a fur coat inside out, rabbit skin on her head, held a wooden knife in one hand and a pail with pea plants in the other. She would scare children by threatening them that she would pierce their tummies and stuff them with the pea plants, if they were too self-indulgent.

(To be fair, belly-slitting Perchta seems to be a common folk character in European countries -- she would stuff rubbish in the bellies of those who were lazy or failed to follow feast traditions. ...) It's interesting how many of the Advent characters (e.g., St. Nicholas) take a role of rewarding good behavior or punishing bad behavior.

SOURCE: http://deborahstearns.blogspot.com/2014/11/czech-holiday-costumes-customs-musaion.html

 

[IbisNibs]

Others have probably said as much before on this thread, but I can easily imagine that any tradition to reinforce communal fasting in the depths of winter, when food was scarce and temptation great, would benefit all.