December 1: "Breakin' Up Christmas"

Hooray Jack, hooray John
Breakin' up Christmas all night long


If you know me decently well, you already know why I chose "Breakin' Up Christmas" (or "Breaking", for the Appalachianly-challenged) for my first installment. I think I've played this tune at old time jams about as far in the calendar from Christmas as it gets, and it never fails to entertain-- me, most of all. As tunes go, there's very little on the surface that makes this one Christmas-y apart from the title, and the fact that Tommy Jarrell says it is, which is as good as the word of the law in old time circles. In the language of our "primitive" music, this is a standard two part tune, meaning that you can separate the melodies into clearly distinguishable "A" and "B" parts. The limited (and widely varying) lyrics are sung over the B part, and those lyrics tell us a lot about the origins of this tune.

One version of a two-line verse goes "January 6th, long time ago, Ma and Pa danced the do-si-do." Wait, January 6th? That's a full 12 days after Christmas (he said, foreshadowingly)! For a quick synopsis, I'll let Joe Newbery and Jim Collier explain in the intro to one of their videos:

For the rest of anyone interested enough to make it beyond that, it's true that the Southern Appalachian tradition was to celebrate Christmas as nearly two weeks of eating, dancing, and partying beginning on December 25 and ending on January 6th, which in the Bible is Epiphany, the day that the Magi arrived at Jesus' bedside. Funny that the predominantly Scots-Irish people of the region should maintain a holiday so widely recognized in the British Isles (he said, with increased foreshadowing). As was the case with many traditional Anglo-Saxon ballads, many Celtic traditions remained well preserved in the eastern mountains well into the 20th century because of the isolated nature of the area even well into the industrial era. According to a fiddler named Lawrence Bolter of Galax, VA (coincidentally now home to a nationally renowned old-time fiddler's convention): 

"Through this country here, they’d go from house to house almost – have a dance at one house, then go off to the next one the following night and all such as that. The week before Christmas and the week after, that’s when the big time was. About a two-week period, usually winding up about New Year. I wasn’t into any of this, but used to laugh about it. They’d play a tune called Breakin’ Up Christmas, that was the last dance they’d have on Christmas, they’d have Wallace Spanger play Breakin’ Up Christmas. There’s an old feller by the name of Bozwell, he’d cry every time."

Please observe a moment of silence for a lifestyle I totally missed the boat on. Also for Bozwell

It seems that Breakin' Up Christmas was more than just the "breaking up" of the party on January 6th, though. A Mt. Airy News article dated December 24, 2013, reads: 

"The spirit of celebration led up to Epiphany or Old Christmas, and filled homes with music, friends, food, and dancing — an ongoing celebration traveling from house to house that lasted until Jan. 6, also known as Epiphany or Old Christmas. This tradition is known as Breaking Up Christmas, and it is a tradition Surry Arts Council is striving to continue with a celebration that hearkens to the old times, free for everyone, along with an open invitation to bring an instrument, join in the festivities, and enjoy the night."

So the whole week was "Breakin' Up Christmas," and someone just got the wise idea to come up with a tune to play at the end of it all. Which begs the question, who came up with the tune? That's a pretty common thing to ask about old Appalachian tunes, and only occasionally is there a concrete answer. One source claims that a fiddler named Preston 'Pat' McKinney, a Civil War veteran from Lambsburg, VA is the composer (McKinney was also one of Tommy Jarrell's early influences). On the other hand, a man named William Norman wrote about the tune on top of the festival in a memoir dated 1864. So which is it? In my opinion, it's likely that plenty of dancing tunes originated from what had to have been a memorable yearly festival, and any one of them may have taken it as their namesake. I think it's worth noting, however, that despite the extremely "old timey" sound of Tommy Jarrell's version-- which I can guarantee is how it's supposed to sound-- it's most likely that our "modern" versions of it are from within the 20th century or shortly before it, which is surprisingly the case with many tunes of its type. 

I'd like to go on a brief tangent here and write a little bit more about Tommy Jarrell. I'm not going to pull up a Google search or anything like that while I type this, I'm just going to say what I know. From what I understand, Tommy bought his first and possibly only fiddle at a garage sale in North Carolina when he was 15. He worked his entire life for the NC Department of Transportation as a road sealer and drove a steam roller to and from work every day. As such, he never saw the need to get a driver's license, even well after he was "discovered." His life and style of fiddling stands as a remarkable bridge between the world he grew up in in western North Carolina and the modern world that we call home. Tommy and his fiddle were deservedly recognized as being a part of American cultural significance sometime during the mid 20th century, and his fame grew with the folk revivals of the 60's. If you deal in stereotypes then you would think that he'd be an old man stuck in his ways and unwilling to accept the innovative folk styles of many young people he met in his old age. You'd be wrong. Tommy was known for welcoming musicians of all types into his home to learn from him for as long as they pleased at no cost to them, as long as they remained to learn. The video I posted above shows one such session, where Tommy is playing a favorite traditional tune surrounded by markedly younger musicians. Near the end of his life Tommy was invited to the Smithsonian and given a Stradivarius to play. He remarked that it was good, but he still preferred his garage sale fiddle. He lived to share his music with anyone who would listen, and his attitude toward and zeal for the advancement of its place in history cannot be underestimated. So thanks, Tommy, wherever you are, and hopefully I'll play "Breakin' Up Christmas" in your honor sometime this year. Hopefully we can all take a page out of your book of kindness this Christmas.

Here's one last version in closing, from The Watertower Bucket Boys, because why not: