The National Nine Mornings Festival Management Committee will be holding a meeting with all groups, organizations and individuals involved in Community Christmas Light Up and Nine Mornings activities.
This meeting is scheduled for Saturday 15th, October 2022 at 9:00 am at the Peace Memorial Hall, with a focus on plans and preparations for the 2022 Nine Mornings Festival.
Nine Mornings is a unique Vincentian festivity associated with the Christmas season. Nine Mornings before Christmas, Vincentians awake in the early hours of the morning and partake in a range of activities, among them sea baths, dances (or in local parlance, fetes), bicycle riding and street concerts.
The origins of this festival are clouded in some mystery, although the original tradition relates it to the ‘novena’ of the Catholic Church on the nine days before Christmas. It is believed that after the early morning church services of the Catholics, worshippers began walking the streets, while others went for sea baths.
From this the popular Nine Mornings festivity emerged. Although popular opinion has this practice as starting during the period of slavery, it was more likely to have been a post-emancipation practice.
