Marilyn's Musings

  The holidays are over for another year. Since our modern Christmas traditions are an amalgam of customs from all over the world and many are recent additions, I wondered how Will Rees (main character in The Shaker Murders) and his family, as well as the Shakers, would have celebrated this holiday. Yes, the Shakers were Christians – a fact in dispute at this time – and would have observed this holiday. The giving of presents, the decoration of the houses with evergreens, the suspension of enmity and the proclamation of peace were all features of the festival right from the beginning. (That is, with some interruptions. The Puritans thought the celebrations took away from the worship of God and banned all jollity.) Caroling, for example, has been a feature of the season since the middle ages. The evergreen wreaths also have had a long history. The Etruscans used wreaths, a tradition that continued into Ancient Greece and Rome. The different plants symbolized different virtues. O