The 100th anniversary of Nine Mornings?

Fri Dec 13, 2013

Come Monday morning, bright and early, our annual national Nine Mornings celebrations officially begin with activities at Heritage Square in Kingstown.

This year’s festivities promise to be as entertaining as in previous years, if we are to go by the programme published by the national Nine Mornings Committee. Besides the national events at Heritage Square in Kingstown, it is always worth the while to journey to those rural communities which also stage events leading up to Christmas.{{more}}

Nine Mornings has been growing in popularity and it is pleasing that the organizing committee continues to ensure that activities are clean and family oriented, taking into consideration the religious underpinnings of the season.

There is a serious matter however, which has arisen, pertaining to the Nine Mornings, which the Ministry of Culture needs to address as a matter of importance. In June this year, out of the blue, the Nine Mornings Committee issued a release stating that 2013 will mark the 100th anniversary of the festival. In that same release, the Committee said, “the origins of the festival are clouded in some mystery,” although oral tradition relates the festival to the early morning church services of the Catholics. The release also said that it is “believed that sometime around 1913, a Vincentian member of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church initiated a tradition of celebrating a Christmas novena in the early hours of the morning.” Later in the same document, without any further supporting evidence having been given, the Committee stated, “2013 will mark the 100th anniversary of the festival…”.

Based on the Nine Mornings Committee own document, the origins of Nine Mornings are unknown. One of this country’s foremost historians, Dr Adrian Fraser, in recently published articles, stated his alarm at the proclamation of the 100th anniversary. He said he has found evidence showing that the police published regulations governing early morning bands and singing processions around the Christmas period, prior to 1913. Even without the records now being provided by the historians, anecdotes from our fore parents, born in the late 19th century, about their early morning Christmas activities, raise serious doubts about the 100-year claim.

What is most disturbing though, is what appears to onlookers, to be the cavalier attitude taken by those responsible, to dating such an important aspect of our country’s culture. Important dates in our nation’s history cannot be arrived at so casually. One cannot arrive at a date in a country’s history based on “belief” and “sometime around”. If we are not sure, we do not have to declare a start date in an effort to market the event. The shroud of mystery over the origins of Nine Mornings, is itself an attraction.

Let us hope that we have it wrong, and that the Ministry of Culture has the solid evidence that 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of Nine Mornings in St Vincent and the Grenadines. We call on the Ministry to share that evidence with the public. The country needs to know for sure.