Gentle Blossoms in the Winter Woodlands

Yesterday, we went to a hippy-holiday-festival, at a Waldorf school in rural New Hampshire. For those who don't know about the Waldorf educational movement, it seems to have emerged in the 60's, at which point I suspect it crested, and it basically makes the Alternative School phenomenon look positively mainstream by contrast. The Waldorf movement had some flagship school in England, back in the 60's or 70's, which I learned about when I did graduate work in education, and apparently they let the kids run around and not-go-to-class if they preferred, with the idea (apparently justified by experience) that they would eventually get tired of cutting class and start attending. There was also some co-ed skinny-dipping at that original school, all part of the hyper-communal bonding agenda, perhaps like what an early Kibbutz might have looked like if it were located in Oregon, minus the hard physical labor.

I suspect this institution in New England has survived some of the more outlandish experiments of the early years. But it was still quite hippy. The harpist and the piano player performing in the main hall, where two white teen-aged girls sang spirituals and Van Morrison. The only non-dessert food on offer was beans-and-rice (vegan, of course), vegetables on skewers, and nachos and salsa. And yes, many of the people - students, parents, teachers, vendors - had a definite "Rainbow Gathering" look and feel.

So of course, someone in our entourage was right at home. And the children clicked into it quickly. They went through the Magical Forest, where they found, or were awarded some shiny stone as the prize. We filed into the "Eurythmea Room," where a very goyish, pleasantly neurotic 6th-grade teacher told us a Hannukah tale about a Bubbe, or grandmother, who couldn't see well accidentally cheerfully, inadvertently served latkes to a hungry bear who wandered into her house and played dreidl with him, rather than with the rabbi whose visit was expected. The children made bearded "gnomes" out of wooden pegs - Daniel's being dressed entirely in black. Ian helped some local artisan with a huge, wacky device, as they made a multi-colored, ten-foot-long jump rope out of some kind of yarn. (Luckily, none of our children actually wanted to buy one of these highly distinguished jump-ropes, which were selling at ten dollars a pop...) Daniel asked the artisan for the left-over snippets of yarn, of many colors, which Daniel lovingly carried around with him for the rest of the day, and eventually took home.

But what moved my heart was Daniel's selection. Amy not-so-wisely made the rounds of the crafts with the children, and apparently I'm the only person in the family who thinks of crafts as something to look at - very briefly - rather than purchase and take home. So Madeleine picked a fairy. Ian of course wanted tiny stuffed dog, about the size of one's thumb. But Daniel selected this very hippyish pair of dolls - a Daddy doll and a baby doll, linked together. Both had rainbow patterns with African overlays - about as 60's as things get. But Daddy and baby.

Of course, by the time we got home, the figures had taken their proper place in DanielWorld: the Daddy was a bad-guy and the baby was a good-guy, for example. (I don't think he was implying that I'm a bad-guy per se; of course, for Daniel, the Bad Guys are kind of like the Home Team, in any case...)

Daniel summed up the experience as follows: "At first I thought it was gonna be boring, but then I recognized it, and it was funner than last time." Later that evening, Daniel reflected: "Daddy, we had a nice day and a nice night." This morning, as I was typing this, he brought his shiny rock, gleaned from the Magic Forest, to show me.

Sometimes the Untraditional is the stuff of "family holiday traditions that you will cherish for years to come..."

(December 3, 2011)