Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival

December 27, 28, and 29, 2007
5:30 and 8:00 pm each evening

For ticket information, please call the church office, 260-423-9424 

The Boar's Head is probably the oldest continuing festival of the Christmas season.

This pageant is rooted in ancient times when the boar was sovereign of the forest. A ferocious beast and menace to humans it was hunted as a public enemy. At Roman feasts, boar was the first dish served. Like our Thanksgiving turkey, roasted boar was a staple of medieval banquets. As Christian beliefs overtook pagan customs in Europe, the presentation of a boar's head at Christmas came to symbolize the triumph of the Christ Child over sin.

The Festival we know today originated at Queen's College, Oxford, England in 1340. Legend has it that a scholar was studying a book of Aristotle while walking through the forest on his way to Christmas Mass. Suddenly, he was confronted by an angry wild boar. Having no other weapon, the resourceful Oxonian rammed his metal-bound philosophy book down the throat of the charging animal, whereupon the brute choked to death. That night the boar's head, finely dressed and garnished, was borne in procession to the dining room, accompanied by carolers singing "in honor of the King of bliss."

By 1607, an expansive ceremony was in use at St. John's College, Cambridge, England. There, the boar's head was accompanied by "mustard for the eating" and decorated with flags and sprigs of evergreen, bay rosemary and holly. It was carried in state to the strains of the Boar's Head carol, still sung in the Christ Church ceremony.

By then the traditional Boar's Head Festival had grown to include lords, ladies, knights, historical characters, cooks, hunters, and pages. Eventually, shepherds and wise men were added to tell the story of the Nativity. The whole was embellished with additional carols, customs and accoutrements. Mince pie and plum pudding good King Wenceslas and his pages, a yule log lighted from the last year's ember...all found a place and a symbolic meaning in the procession.

Plymouth Congregational Church presents this Festival as a gift to the people of Fort Wayne. It is not a story of tunes and times past and gone. It is a living story told by modern day minstrels and echoed in all of us. These performances are given with our best wishes for a blessed and joyous season.

Happy Christmas-Tide!