Mardi Gras is coming! Laissez le bon temps rouler! (Let the good times roll!) Time to get out your krewe masks and your beads. Time to be more (or less) than normal. Find your identity. Be your own phantom. Discover yourself and don your best mask.

Much of who we are comes from how we humans design identities to our bodies. And beyond sexuality (a discussion for another day), much emphasis is placed on our various body parts but most of our identification comes from our faces. Our face is our “self.” Age and biological features such as “you look just like your Mom,” are often obvious ways we mark our identities. Other symbolic identities like our social identity and status require our face in order to express or alter our identities. How is this done? By adding or subtracting something like cosmetics, costumes, hairstyles or masks. Or a combination of all of those. Our masks therefore, are important.

A mask completely or partially hides the face. Did you know that the word “person” comes from the Greek word meaning “mask,” or the role played by an actor in a performance?” So our faces reveal our social self, who we make ourselves in relation to the role we choose to play in society and in relation to other people around us. Our persona, or mask, is related to and is revealed in the personality, the self or the ego. Masks give us the ability to transform the “person” behind the image into someone or something else. This “else” makes our masks playful and powerful and can relate our new “else” to myth or ritual. Masks allow us to pretend. Or “become” new.

As an example, what child can put on a Halloween costume and not carry through the mask identity? A dragon must roar, a vampire must bite, and a fairy must wave a wand. For a moment in time, an hour, a night, a child has taken on the personal of the dragon who loves tacos, of the scary count vampire or the good witch from Oz.

Adults do no less. I have seen fully-grown women in a witches black gauze, cackle through the night and mature men in grey robes brandishing a staff yell, “you shall not pass!” I have watched teens suddenly become orcs and mothers of little tykes become Mothers of Dragons.

These new identities allow children and adults to become something beyond who they are or can ever be. Then how much more powerful is a mask when the transformation feels real?

Great civilizations of the Old and New Worlds made and used masks daily. Death masks accompanied the Egyptian mummy to the tomb, and allowed the soul of the deceased to recognize its body after it returned to the tomb in the evening. The Aztecs and Maya of Middle America, and the Inca and other civilizations of the Andes used masks. The Chinese, Indians, and Japanese used masks from ancient times in a variety of different ways including theater, as did the Greeks and Romans. Finally, tribal and elder societies continue mask use in today’s rituals.

The early Christian Church took a dim view of masking and suppressed it whenever possible. This was partly due to masks’ association with pagan rites, and partly because of the immoral behavior that was often released through the anonymity afforded by the mask. However, the Church’s efforts at suppression were not entirely successful. In rural Europe, masking customs survived as Carnival and Mardi Gras; with the rise of the Commedia del’ Arte during the Renaissance, and the subsequent popularity of secular theater, masking firmly established itself in European traditions.

Arizona

The Milwaukee Public Museum has more than 300 masks on exhibit, and at least twice that number in its stored collections. Every continent except Australia is represented, as well as every medium from leather to clay. The masks come in all sizes, all shapes, encompassing all levels of social and economic peoples from the Eskimo to the Japanese. They also “do” a great many different things, and this “doing,” or function, is further complicated because the same mask can do several different things at different times and for different activities.

Historically, Greek drama, which was and is a masked performance, began as a masked ritual. Over time, the religious aspects of masked drama gave way to a more secular function of entertainment. In Indonesia, India, China, Japan and Europe, masked theater continues to be performed, either with religious or semi-religious overtones, while masked festivals are found throughout Europe, Central and South America and often coordinate with significant Church holidays.

One of the most important things that masks do is transform the identity of the wearer, and changing identity is not the same thing as transforming it. Take ceremonies in New Guinea, West and Central Africa, and North America where masks are used in “rites of passage.”

These rituals mark important transitions in the life cycle of individuals, or classes of individuals, in a society. Initiation into adulthood or a secret society, marriage, movement to a higher social rank, and funeral ceremonies are events that are often marked by masked performance. Death and rebirth are common themes in rites of passage, and masks help the visualization. In a rite of passage, an earlier identity ceases to exist, and is symbolically replaced with a new and entirely different identity. This is also a permanent change via the mask.

Masks encourage us to transform ourselves, and empower us to do so. They permit us to replace one reality with another. They can ultimately provide us with a better understanding of who we really are behind the role/masks we put on every morning and take off every night in our dreams.

For writers, masks are important. We use them to create. We “mask up” and become our characters, we redefine life, worlds, morals, and refine personalities and behaviors. Masks allow us to write fabulous stories or tell truths (or both). Masks can help us be real or help us be fantastically bizarre.

Understanding the role your persona takes in real life determines your author ability to make the masks work for you and your characters.

Mardi Gras is Feb 13, so I’m a bit early. But that week I want to talk about more loving pursuits, so forgive my early examination. Hey, all good right? You have time to find your mask. The key is to remember masks can transform and empower in real life and in your stories. The trick is making yours masks so good that no one can tell truth from fiction.

Inside or out, your mask matters. Reveal with pride.

I remain, Yours Between the Lines,
Sherry
(Completely unmasked. Honest.)

The holidays came to and end for me on Saturday, January 6, as I celebrated Epiphany. Understand, I’m not a overtly religious person and I don’t wave my faith around for others to witness, but my holidays are overflowing with traditions and celebrating Epiphany is one of them. Epiphany is the day that follows Twelfth Night or the 12th day after Christmas. Basically, this day is believed to celebrate the arrival of the Magi to the stable where Jesus lay. The traveling magi followed the star of Bethlehem to the stable’s location and it took them 12 days to make the journey. Twelfth Night celebrates their arrival.

In today’s world, most use Epiphany as the day when Christmas decorations come down, a tradition that has been in practice since the Victorian era. Many people practice this and claim to use the date for removal of the holiday sparkle but few understand why. Whether you use Twelfth Night or Epiphany, there is a basis for removing your decorations.

The tradition goes that it is unlucky to remove decorations prior to 12th Night and if they aren’t removed by Epiphany then they should remain up all year (takers anyone?). Until the 19th century, people left decorations up until Candlemas Day on February 2 (the 40th day of Epiphany and celebrates other Christian events).

Going back to medieval and pagan traditions, it was once believed that tree spirits lived in the greenery – such as holly, ivy and pine cones – which decorated homes. During the holiday season, being indoors provided shelter for these delicate spirits but had to be released once the celebrations ended. If they were not, then fields and gardens did not return and agricultural and food problems resulted. So great seriousness was placed on the traditions.

And though today there is so much commercial glitter and gloss to Christmas decorations, there are so many, like me, who still adhere to the “old ways.” 

For example, I have a very old crèche that goes under the tree during the holidays. Why does it go there? Because the tree symbolizes the star (my tree is topped with an angel) and after Christmas, the tree lights signify the star that lights the way. When I was little, even the magi were moved closer and closer to the crèche so that they stood in the doorway to this little stable by the time 12th Night arrived and the wonder was fulfilled.

 
(mine is like this sample)

Such is Epiphany. It is also a symbol for the writer in me. I slowed down and then ceased most of my working writer time from the end of NaNoWriMo (Nov 30) until Saturday and Epiphany. There were too many distractions and I felt I needed to step back and regroup. After all, I did publish two books in 2017 and won several awards. I completed several freelance editing jobs and continued mentoring several young writers. I felt tired and I needed to feel the holidays, appreciate the moment, and find my own Epiphany.

What does that mean? I needed to realize the reason for my own season. To find the purpose in myself and why I needed to continue writing. In centering myself I rediscovered purpose and desires.

Whatever your personal religious beliefs, beyond the glitz and glam of the holidays season (whatever you do or do not celebrate), I hope you found your own Epiphany and are now prepared to bring focus and energy back to your work and your writing. The renewal is important to your continued success or to finding your initial success.

And even as you do this for yourself, I will ask you how do your characters celebrate? Have you any holidays for them? Do you even think of giving them the traditions that include some sort of pagan or religious reasons in their life and purpose? You don’t have to be religious to realize that every person has some sort of raison d’etre (reason for being).

As this year moves forward, I hope you find your epiphany. In other words, I hope you find that something that is very important to you, that fulfills you and gives you understanding of yourself and your role as a writer and a person.

And I don’t mind if your decorations are still up. I like the sparklies too and loathe to see them come down. I may leave mine up til Mardi Gras! (just kidding. Maybe.)

______________________________________________

 Allow me to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year and thank you for all your support in 2017. Stay tuned — going to have some fun this year.

I remain, as always,

THE LEGACY OF TRADITIONS

As I prepared for Christmas this year, I went through my usual, annual habits and realized some of my habits were in fact greater than such a trivial label.  Many of my habits are actual  traditions, made so not by me but from a long list of women who prepared for hundreds of Christmases before me.

I guess my realization began as I gathered the tablecloths from the bottom drawer of the sideboard. In the bottom, lovingly folded, the white tablecloths with candy canes, cookies, and Santa stockings were waiting for their annual viewing.  I inherited these tablecloths from my mother who got them from my paternal grandmother, who received one of them from my great-grandmother.  I removed these cloths and as I passed my fingers over the well-worn pattern, I realized that I was standing, walking, and working in the shadow of a great Christmas tradition – the ritual unpacking and ironing of the cherished linens.

    From 2009

How many times had I seen my grandmothers and mother stand beside the ironing board and watch the back-and-forth motion accompanied with the “sssshhhhh” of steam rising from the freshly washed, pristine cloths?  How often did I marvel at their patience as they performed this ritual ironing, wondering why on earth would they bother (you know teenagers and their lack of “big picture” living)?  How often did my mother send me to the kitchen to refill the little spray bottle with cool water, used to dampen the heavy cotton cloths and eliminate wrinkles?  I even have a memory of a great “thud” of a true cast iron as my grandmother labored over very old, thick, cotton tablecloths with an oven-heated iron. Talk about arm muscles!

  This year

As I pulled out my ironing board, all these memories and thoughts rushed back. I had a small, self-satisfied moment as I realized now I was a part of a wondrous past, a line of great women who continued a truly satisfying tradition of Christmas linens.  I need not ask “why go through all that ironing” as I look at my dining room or kitchen table.  I can’t help but smile, proudly I admit, as I spot the Christmas table cloths with candy canes and Christmas stockings draped over sofa tables or the sideboard. There is a Christmas magic of which I am now a part, as woven as I am into this tapestry of tradition.

Need you ask why a woman who never irons at any other time of the year, irons once a year for Christmas? Call it part of the decorations?  Sure.  But it is so much more to me now.

This is the legacy of traditions. Like the corn soufflé served over certain holidays but only once a year. Like serving ham on New Year’s Day, turkey on Thanksgiving,  or goose for Christmas. Like red, white, and blue decorations for Fourth of July but only that day. These are the things we expect, demand and rely upon as legacy and heritage. Whatever we grew up with or adopted and continue throughout our lives, these matter. These actions and items are comforting and fulfilling because they are part of our “life identity.”

Just like I must have chocolate chip cookies that include a box of Jell-O Pudding to keep the cookies soft, and I must bake these just before Christmas. As I turn on my mixer, I am transported to an older kitchen where other women mixed a batter just like mine and turned out chocolate chip cookies as I will do, to the delight of the house. Habit? Tradition? Legacy.

As an author, this legacy of tradition matters in your writing too. Each book in a series builds on a legacy. The familiar habits of your characters, the places they go regularly. The friendships they develop and the depth of each relationship changes and is enriched in ever chapter, in every book. Every story revisit is a chance to use the traditions and the legacies that you give your readers. And like things we do for ourselves over holidays (even birthdays), so the readers feel taken into your family of stories when you surround them with traditions which completes legacies and legends.

Build these traditions from the beginning in your stories and when you can, repeat them as your stories continue. Pay attention to your real life legacy of traditions and as you enjoy the habits of the season, remember you can give your readers the same joy. Whether you mirror, mimic or create new ideas for your characters and their lives, remember the legacy you leave in your stories can be as real to your readers as your enjoyments are to you.

***

ANNOUNCEMENT:  Be sure to join me in my monthly Facebook Live chat on Thursday, Dec 21 at 10 am EST. And come back to Facebook later in the day for a BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR DRAHOMIRA – she’s turning 1000 (well, actually 1020 but we’re keeping to the stories). And she’s got a surprise for you which I will tell you about during my chat!

***

I wish each of you a very Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year. I won’t have a blog post for you on Christmas day but I will have a Year in Review post to celebrate the opening of 2018. Come back then and share tales of your Christmas with me.

Here’s to Auld Lang Syne, a song that means “for the sake of old times” and reminds us to cherish old friendships, good health and to toast the new year. Here’s to you! See you next year and thank you for joining me this year as we all strive to be the best we can be.

I remain,