The Why of the Festival: Kids and the Power of Music

There was a golden moment when we launched the Festival last Saturday with the Dundarave Christmas Fair.  The Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach Youth Choir was just striking up their cover version of Sarah's haunting hymn to the beauty of life, Ordinary Miracle, an eagle landed in the crown of a tree high above the Festival's Longhouse when everything went 'click'.  

It was a moment of complete confirmation of the goodness rooted deep in our community.  

You could see it in the thousand people who filtered and thronged through the Fair, turning Dundarave Beach into a wonderful public square.  Neighbours met neighbours, the astonishingly generous family that was hosting a Christmas party for their friends around their Christmas tree gave their cider and hot chocolate to anyone who asked, and kids were everywhere.  They sang with the Red Hot Mammas, took centre stage in the Festival Longhouse with the Pacific Spirit Children's Choir, choked us up with Ordinary Miracle, huddled in their wheel chairs under the brilliant heaters supplied by Wild Coast Productions (it's true, Wild Coast thinks of everything.)  And they danced -- spontaneously on beach logs to the enormous sound of the West Van Youth Band, and with a dark, druidic joy as Bowen Island's Black Lambs (the only kids' Morris side in Canada, as far as we know) took to the lawn of Dundarave Beach.

This was a start to the holidays that was organic and pure joy, showing that kids empowered by music can deepen our humanity, open wide the door to bliss, and connect us with the vast, loving spirit of the Christmas season.