Rural Vermont village life at its best will be on display at the fourth annual Cabot Village 12th Night Celebration, presented by Cabot Arts, Friday and Saturday, Jan. 5 and 6. The festival features a wide array of performing arts and activities for all ages in a family friendly atmosphere.
Throughout Cabot Village festival-goers will be treated to concerts, dance, storytelling, theater, arts and crafts workshops, and games. Outdoors on the Cabot Village Common there will be ice skating, games, bonfires, a hot cocoa station and a paper lantern sunset parade. If that isn’t enough of an attraction, the festival is free to all.
Festival highlights include the Jeremy Sicely Band, award-winning storyteller Simon Brooks, central Vermont’s own Morris dance team The Midnight Capers, No Strings Marionette Company, a Scrag Mountain Music “Woodland Echos” concert, Cabot Community Theater Mummer’s Play, Cabot School Chamber Singers and the Dave Keller Band.
Twelfth Night celebrations originated with pre-Christian Celtic peoples, later becoming a Christian celebration. But this is not the case in Cabot.
“We are referring to something older than Christianity,” says Cabot Arts Executive Director Dana Robinson.
While the Christian holiday, celebrated on Jan. 5 marks the 12th and final night of the Christmas season and the coming of Epiphany, the festival’s theme is non-religious in Cabot.
“It’s to celebrate the new year and the returning of the light,” said Robinson.
Twelfth Night here “is a massive collection of great entertainment, with activities for families and kids and is family-centric especially in the afternoon,” Robinson said. “You shouldn’t miss the highlight of the afternoon on Saturday when the Sunset Lantern Parade lights up the village in a colorful display.”
Highlights of the festival include Friday night’s festival opener, the Jeremy Sicely Band at Willey Building Auditorium at 7 p.m. Guitar and dobro/Resophonic guitar player Jeremy Sicely is a native Vermonter and front man of the award-winning bluegrass band Beg, Steal or Borrow. In this special concert, Sicely has created a band of great local players to feature music from his most recent solo release, “Buck Fever.” They include Colin McCaffrey, Andrew Stearns, Eric O’Hara, Rudy Dauth and Patti Casey.
From New Hampshire via Great Britain, storyteller Simon Brooks will perform at the Willey Building at noon Saturday. Brooks is a storyteller, humorist and author and has presented in several countries. He has won awards and honors from Storytelling World and Parent’s Choice.
The Midnight Capers will perform Saturday. The Montpelier-based Morris dance troupe perform what has been dubbed “elegant, boisterous and exciting English traditional folk dancing, accompanied by tremendous musicianship.”
Kids and their parents love the Randolph’s Strings Marionette Company, which will perform at 1:10 p.m. Saturday at the Willey Building. This is the duo’s first 12th Night Festival performance. These Vermont artisans lovingly handcraft the marionettes, props and scenery, whether for an original tale or an adaptation of a classic. Shows begin with an interactive song featuring audience members, and finish with demonstrations sparked by the audience’s curious questions.
“Spiritual Sounding: Woodland Echoes,” co-sponsored by Marshfield’s Scrag Mountain Music, will perform at at 2:30 p.m. in the Cabot United Church sanctuary. The show features Evan Premo, double bass, viola da gamba and hammered dulcimer, and Michael Laughing Fox Charette, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, on Native flutes and storytelling. Laughing Fox will begin the sounding with the creation story of the flute, which will morph into an extended musical meditation.
Cabot Community Theater will present the 2024 Mummers Play on the Cabot Village Common at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Mummers’ plays are one of the oldest surviving features of the traditional English Christmas. Mumming in England goes back more than a thousand years. The plays are based loosely on the legend of St. George and the dragon and are intended to show the struggle between good and evil. They also portray the rebirth of the springtime after the darkness of winter.
The Dave Keller Band closes out the festivities on Saturday night with a dance at at 7 p.m. in the Willey Building. Keller is arguably Vermont’s top blues musician and bandleader. He’s riding high on the acclaim of his new release, “My Time to Shine,” and leads a rocking and soulful quartet for this dance.
Beyond these events, festival goers will find an arts and crafts workshop for kids, Sunset Lantern Parade on Cabot Village Common, a community dinner, The Bleeding Hearts band in The Den at Harry’s and the Wassail Community Sing.
The festival is growing in popularity and attracts hundreds. If you are driving to Cabot there is parking throughout the village. If you get hungry there is food in The Den at Harry’s Hardware and Headwaters Restaurant.
Cabot Arts Cabot Arts will present the fourth annual Cabot Village 12th Night Celebration Friday and Saturday, Jan. 5 and 6. Family entertainment and activities will be presented throughout the village. Admission is free; for schedule and information, go online to www.cabotarts.org/12th-night-celebration
