Christmas 2019 | jasna-winnipeg

Christmas at Ralph Connor House

Although it isn’t exactly Christmas at Pemberley it’s pretty close to it. The gracious surroundings of our regular meeting venue at historic Ralph Connor House is a perfect background to a Jane Austen Christmas feast. Arriving at the port-courchère and walking through the heavily carved wooden doorway is like a passage back in time.

The group gathered in the great room and shared a noggin or two before we adjourned to the elegant dining room for our traditional turkey dinner complete with crackers to pull. Regency folk enjoyed simple pleasures and truth to tell, it’s more fun pulling a Christmas cracker and getting a surprise than it is to twiddle with your iPhone. And wow! Inside you get a gold crown, a joke, an item of trivia and a toy.

Table talk was lively with everybody sharing stories about memorable places they’ve visited and exotic foods they’ve enjoyed. And boy...this group has covered the world from Australia to Zimbabwe to Italy to Inuvik and beyond. Lady Catherine de Bourgh would most certainly have wanted her share of that conversation.

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After a brief business meeting we adjourned to the great room for a boisterous game of Pride and Prejudice Charades. Imagine how you would act out the charade for ‘Seaside Bathing’ or ‘Gretna Green’. Although our hand signals for ‘sounds like’, ‘the whole idea’, ‘syllables’ and so on were a little rusty everyone managed to take a turn and ultimately win a prize.

So it’s decided. Our new Christmas tradition is going to be Jane Austen Charades. And since we managed to shake off the rust about how to play the game, we all agree there should be more words and phrases to challenge us so we can really make fools of ourselves (instead of just sort of making fools of ourselves).

At the conclusion of the evening one of our members performed what has become a traditional reading from a little pastiche called, “Mr. Darcy’s Night Before Christmas” by Julie Petersen.

Our next meeting will be February 13, 2020 at which time the presentation will be:
Persuasion: What Might Jane Have Changed?