Happy Holidays! AFC’s 2024 Mummers Play

Happy Holidays from the American Folklife Center! In this blog post, you can enjoy our 2024 holiday mummers play in script and photos. As you may know, every year since 2009, staff members of the American Folklife Center have brought our collections to life around the holidays by acting, rhyming, singing, and dancing for other Library staff members and for members of the public. For a few weeks before the holidays, we write the play, cast it, and then plan and execute costumes, props, and other preparations…all while continuing to work at our regular jobs for the Library, of course! Typically we perform at two or three holiday parties, and cap it off with a public performance in the Great Hall. Even during the pandemic we kept this tradition alive by doing the 2020 play as a podcast and the 2021 play as a Zoom meeting!

Our performances are based on the ancient tradition of mumming, which has come down to our archive in the form of play scripts, songs, photos, and other items collected in the early twentieth century. For a more thorough introduction to this tradition, please visit our introductory post on mumming, as well as previous plays, which you can find at this link.

Keeping Cool and Dry for the Holidays: A Film Preservation Mumming [1]

Performed by the AFC Mummers
Written by Stephen Winick
With help from the AFC Mummers

Father Christmas: Stephen Winick
Tatterjack: Jennifer Cutting
Linear Feet, North Pole Librarian: Meg Nicholas
Charlie Chaplin: Michelle Stefano
Mary Pickford: Andrea Decker
Heat & Moisture: Doug Peach
St. George Bailey: George Thuronyi
Connor MacLeod: David Brunton
Frankie (Hot Dog): John Fenn
Poppy (Popcorn): Stacey Jocoy
Sparkles (Soda): Deb DeGeorge
Doctor Zhivago: Allina Migoni
Hope: Hope O’Keeffe

[Enter Singing Here We Come a Wassailing] [2]

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand’ring
So fair to be seen.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door;
But we are merry mummers,
Whom you have seen before.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

FATHER CHRISTMAS [3]:
Room, ROOM! Gentles all, pray give us room to rhyme
We’ve come to show activity
This merry Christmas time
Activity of youth, activity of age
Such activity has never been before upon a stage
In comes I, old Father Christmas
And be I welcome or welcome not,
I hope old Father Christmas will never be forgot
My beard is long, my back is bent
My knees are weak, my strength is spent
Two thousand, four and twenty is a very great age for me
And if we’d been deliberating all these years
What a cybersecurity town hall meeting that would be! [4]
And speaking of meetings, well, that reminds me
We’re having a meeting at the North Pole Library [5]

[The characters spread out behind FC]

The North Pole Film Preservation Board meets every year [6]
To decide which films best spread Holiday Cheer
And we add them to our North Pole Film Registry [7]
Here at the North Pole audio visual Preservation Pavilion: NAVPP [8]
I’ve come with Tatterjack, who is my musical Top Elf [9]
To see which films end up on the proverbial Top Shelf [10]

Now here’s our great leader Linear Feet [11],
The best Librarian you’ll ever meet
She uses her training, skills, and research, not just personal taste or whims
To guide our long discussions about the greatest holiday…fims

LINEAR FEET:
I think you mean films, Father C!

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
I prefer fims, Linear Feet. Do you want to know why?

LINEAR FEET and FATHER CHRISTMAS in unison:
Because fims include…No L! [12]

[Tatterjack plays a big wah-wah on the accordion]

LINEAR FEET
It’s time you learned some new dad jokes, old friend!
And it’s also time for our chit-chat to end
The North Pole Film Preservation Board must commence deliberation…
With Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to make the first presentation [13]

CHAPLIN:
Good morning, everybody…I don’t want to start a quarrel
But how can “Home Alone” be on the list, and not “A Christmas Carol?” [14]

PICKFORD:
I agree! “Die Hard” makes the grade, but “Lethal Weapon” doesn’t?
“A Christmas Story” was good enough, but “Trading Places” wasn’t? [15]

[HEAT and MOISTURE start walking through the scene as though they’re looking for something]

CHAPLIN:
I think this board has got some serious work to do!

PICKFORD:
I agree, let’s start with…hey, who the heck are you…two?

HEAT & Moisture: We’re Heat and Moisture, the enemies of film stability [16]
We’ll just be destroying all your movies, to the best of our ability!

PICKFORD: What? We can’t have that! Someone take them away!

CHAPLIN: Is there a hero at this meeting who can boldly save the day?

ST GEORGE
Yes, here I am, St. George…Bailey. You know, from it’s a wonderful life! [17]
My adventure was a mystery that did not come from strife!
Actually, that’s a line from one of those old Mummers Plays I’ve seen
I don’t really understand it, but it SOUNDS like what I mean…. [18]
Anyway, I’m the knight that bids you destructive imps to stand
If you harm our films I’ll strike you down with glittering sword in hand!

HEAT & MOISTURE:
You know what, fighting a crazy sword guy is WAY above our pay grade
So you’d better talk to our boss; he’s much better with a blade
Hey, MacLeod!

HIGHLANDER:
In comes I, the Highlander…also known as Connor MacLeod [19]
My films are known for being cheesy, violent, and loud
They did not do so well at the box office, you know
But they did become cult movies when released on video!

ST. GEORGE
Yeah, I remember those movies. You sound French but your character’s a Scot
And that Ramirez guy sounds Scottish even though he’s not
He’s supposed to be Egyptian or Spanish—it’s confusing!
Can you explain what’s up with all those accents you were using?

HIGHLANDER:
Please don’t ask… All the critics were confused
And when they wrote about my films, we got such horrible reviews!
“Incomprehensible” Ebert said, “almost awesome in its badness”
“Coherence takes a vacation” says the podcast “Stinker Madness.” [20]
Why must people think so much? It was all just simple fun!
Like, remember our great catchphrase: “There can be only one?” [21]

ST. GEORGE:
Yeah, I didn’t really get that either…There could be only one…but…y’know, WHY?

HIGHLANDER:
Ours not to reason why, ours just to kill or die!
It was aliens or something… if you think about it any more [22]
It will Stop Making Sense…So just embrace the Fog of War [23]

MARY PICKFORD:
OK, so this whole thing makes me feel kind of dense.
But you’re at the library now destroying movies, how does THAT make any sense?

CHAPLIN:
Wait! I understand! If he saves the Highlander movies, but destroys all the rest
They go from being the worst films in the world…to some of the best!

LINEAR FEET:
And then in the course of time when our choice of films is small
We’ll be forced to include them on the registry after all!

[TatterJack plays ominous chords]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
Diabolically clever!

ST. GEORGE BAILEY:
I’m sorry MacLeod, we can’t put Highlander 2 on that list
It’s just too bad a movie, so let’s fight if you insist

HIGHLANDER:
There can be only one!

ST. GEORGE:
Yeah, well, there shoulda been only one! [24]

[They fight, and St. George is stabbed]

ST. GEORGE:
Where the heck was Claaaaaaaarence? [Dies] [25]

PICKFORD:
Well, this is…awkward! I mean, the Film Preservation Board IS prone to overheating…

CHAPLIN:
But this is the first time anyone’s actually been murdered at a meeting!

HEAT & MOISTURE:
Okay, well, now that our boss has won, you can go make your selections,
And we’ll be in the film vaults, degrading your collections

LINEAR FEET:
Oh no! What are we gonna do?

INTERMISSION—the characters all freeze

[Poppy, Sparkles, Frankie parade through singing “Let’s All Go to the Lobby.” The other actors join in while frozen, but George remains dead….] [26]
Let’s all go to the lobby
Let’s all go to the lobby
Let’s all go to the lobby
And get ourselves a treat

Delicious things to eat
The popcorn can’t be beat

The sparkling drinks are just dandy
The chocolate bars and the candy
So let’s all go to the lobby
And get ourselves a treat

LINEAR FEET:
Oh no! What are we gonna do?

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
Not so fast, Heat and Moisture; although he lost the fight,
Perhaps our St. George Bailey can still come through all right!
Here at the North Pole we have an excellent health care plan
Every country ought to have one, you know…anybody can
Observe: you only have to call, and a doctor will arrive [27]
And with any luck at all, bring this dead saint back alive
Why don’t you try it?

PICKFORD:
Is there a doctor to be found?

CHAPLIN:
To cure his deep and deadly…wound  [pronounced to rhyme with “found”]?

ALL:
Wound! [Pronounced correctly]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
They’re used to silent movies, you see! [28]

DOCTOR:
Here I am, Doctor Zhivago [29]
I’m known from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago

CHAPLIN:
Yes, I saw the movie that they made about you
But my derriere fell asleep about halfway through!

DOCTOR:
Ha! It seemed long to you, but remember, I had to live it!
But I danced with your daughter in that Christmas scene, so I think you should forgive it [30]

PICKFORD:
So explain what kind of doctor you are, just for our Board members
I mean, your film was just so long that nobody remembers!

DOCTOR:
I studied external medicine in imperial Russia, where they say I was a Tsar!
And after the revolution, well, they told me I’d go far
Like to a gulag in Siberia, not far from Magadan
So I hoofed it out of there, escaping through Afghanistan
Since then, I’ve been to every library from Timbuktu to Rio
Memory, Knowledge, and Imagination… that’s my golden trio [31]
From the South Pole to the North Pole to right here at NAVPP
Everybody knows Doctor Zhivago, also known as…Me!

LINEAR FEET:
Hmmm, what can you cure?

DOCTOR:
I can cure redox blemishes, Base Deterioration,
Silver mirroring and exudation
Cellulose Nitrate flareup, Perforated Roll,
Vinegar syndrome, and faulty light control
Dye Fade, Shrinkage, Delamination,
Embrittlement, Distortion, even anti-Halation! [32]
Also Catalog Freezes, Continuing Resolution Wheezes
And all other Librarious diseases [33]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
Yes, yes, but you can’t cure a man who’s been DEAD for five minutes!

DOCTOR:
I can cure him if he’s been dead since the National Film Preservation Act of 1992! Will you join me on my rounds? [34]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
Yes.

[Father C. and Doctor J. walk around the body]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
So what can you do for him?

DOCTOR:
Well, I’m user-centered, data-informed, and digitally enabled [35]
That means I check his pulse with my fingers and make sure his chart is labeled
Redefining Film Preservation is the title of my plan [36]
Which means I better bring this character back to life as best I can
I have this little remedy, called Dr. Stuart’s Pills [37]
It’s for Piles, Pimples, pustules, fever, ague, chills
From lacerated Acetate to Plasticizer pain
It’s the best of old folk remedies for films as has been slain
Let’s just put one under his tongue

[Doctor pokes at St. George; Nothing Happens]

HIGHLANDER:
Quack, quack, quack! [38]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
Doctor, I believe you forgot the magic incantation [39]

DOCTOR AND FATHER CHRISTMAS:
[Lead the crowd in the incantation]: Engage! Inspire! Inform! [40]

[St. George Gasps, opens eyes.]

[Accordion sound and applause as St. George rises up.]

ST. GEORGE:
Thank goodness I’m alive again, thanks to this humanitarian
Last time I died, my wife was forced to become the town librarian! [41]

HIGHLANDER:
Quel surprise, George Bailey’s back
It seems Zhivago is not really such a quack
So mes amis, Heat and Moisture, head on into the vault
There are miles and miles of movies just awaiting your assault

ST. GEORGE:
Not so fast! Now that I’m up and off the floor,
Come on all of you, I’ll fight you some more

FATHER CHRISTMAS
Now now, for centuries of Yuletides I’ve been in this mummers play
And fighting never solves a thing, I think it’s fair to say
So I have a subcommittee to help us all to cope
Led by a thoughtful being simply known as…Hope [42]

HOPE:
Thank you, Father Christmas…
Now, Hope is a simple concept, and yet it seems to me
That all this strife and fighting simply do not have to be.
All it takes is Hope to keep these movie buffs from fighting
A little hope for everyone, and life seems more exciting
Take poor MacLeod…he lost hope that his epic of the sword
Would receive the recognition of our Preservation Board
As “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”
And yet, in certain ways, the series is Magnificent!
It’s a global cult classic, “so bad it’s good” they say
So your dreams came true after all, don’t you think? In a way?

HIGHLANDER:
I…guess so

HOPE:
And look at these mummers, after thirty-odd Decembers
Still making fun of YOUR old movies, which means…the world remembers!
That makes you significant, your impact is irrevocable
So someday your films will make the list…it’s practically inevitable!

HIGHLANDER:
Really?  You think so?

HOPE:
Of course! But then…I spring eternal! [43]
And besides, you’re immortal…and everyone appreciates a man in a kilt!

HEAT & MOISTURE:
She has a point, boss, it seems to me you only have to wait!
I mean, Doctor Zhivago isn’t on the list yet, and everyone knows it’s great! [44]

POPPY:
And look at us, we’re just a snipe with dancing food and drink [45]

SPARKLES:
But they put our movie on that list…you’ll make it too, I think! [46]

HIGHLANDER:
I suppose you all are right…I don’t need to take these measures
My films will soon be counted among our cinematic treasures.

LINEAR FEET:
In that case you can leave us to continue preservation,
Go back to Zeist and wait for your inevitable elevation. [47]

HIGHLANDER:
Very well, I shall leave you to, as they say, Keep Cool and Dry
Farewell! I will not drag this out into The Long Goodbye [48]

[Highlander walks away]

HOPE:
My job is done for now, it’s clear
So long, farewell, I’m outta here! [49]

[Joins Highlander]

CHAPLIN:
Buh-bye MacLeod!  Don’t call us, we’ll call you!

HEAT:
So now that we’re out of a job, what do Heat and I do?

POPPY:
Don’t worry, guys, there’s always hope…It might not be what you planned

SPARKLES:
But we can always use your talents at the old concession stand!

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
So that’s the story of the North Pole Film Preservation Board Meeting
A tale that has a moral that might just bear repeating:
There’s always Hope, and remembering that can really save the day.
And so, my good elf Tatterjack, it’s time for you to play!

TATTERJACK:
Here I am, Tatterjack!
With my little accordion on my back
It’s time to take my eazum squeezum
And play a tune that’s bound to please ‘em.
With my head so big, and my brain so small,
I’ll call for a tune to please you all!
Muddy boots and dirty faces
Dancers all now take your places!

[Jennifer plays intro to “Lilliburlero” on the melodeon. Dancers dance two figures, while the rest clap along, then applaud to prompt audience] [49]

FATHER CHRISTMAS:
We hope you all have been impressed
And think Film Preservation mumming is the best
We won’t delay, lest tedium befall.
We wish you a merry Christmas
And Happy Holidays to all!

All Sing on Choruses: “Gloucestershire Wassail.” [50]
(Cast invites audience to sing along)

(Chorus): Wassail, wassail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee

And here’s to the bullock and to his right eye
Pray God send our master a good Christmas pie
A good Christmas pie that may we all see
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee

(Chorus)

So here is to the milk cow and to her broad horn
May God send our master a good crop of corn
A good crop of corn that we may all see
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee

(Chorus)

And here’s to the calf and to her left ear
Pray God send our master a happy New Year
A happy New Year as e’er he did see
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee

(Chorus)

Then here’s to the maid in the lily white smock
Who tripped to the door and slipped back the lock
Who tripped to the door and pulled back the pin
For to let all us jolly wassailers in.

(Double Chorus)

Dedication

It’s always difficult to lose friends and colleagues, but this year the AFC Mummers were hit particularly hard by the passing of two friends and supporters.

Karen Lund was a longtime friend of the Mummers who worked in the Library’s Music Division. Karen’s husband Matthew Barton is a former AFC staff member who now works at NAVCC. Both Karen and Matt are knowledgeable and passionate about film and we thought about them while creating this play.

Danna Bell was a national leader in the archiving field, a core member of the Library of Congress K-12 education team, and a prolific blogger for the Library of Congress. She was also a fan of the mummers, and some of my favorite photos of the mummers include Danna in the audience! Danna has been memorialized in this blog post.

Both Karen and Danna were fantastic colleagues who made us feel lucky to work at the Library of Congress, and we’d like to dedicate this year’s mumming to them.

Notes

[1] The idea for this play came partly from the Library of Congress’s Film Costume Ball, a public event we held earlier this year as part of Live at the Library. A play about the National Film Preservation Board and National Film Registry was a natural way to employ film actors and characters in a mummers play. “Keeping Cool and Dry” was the title of a white paper about film preservation published 30 years ago by the Library’s Redefining Preservation Task Force.

[2] “Here We Come a-Wassailing” is a traditional Christmas song found in many sources. James Madison Carpenter has two versions in his collection at AFC, one from Mrs. J. T. Kendall in Grinton, Yorkshire, and one credited to “Christmas Carols, Marks and Spencer Ltd., Penny Bazarr [sic.]”  Alan Lomax also collected a beautiful version from Jean Ritchie of Viper, Kentucky, which is in our collections and quite close to our mummers’ version. You can find that version at this link. Wassailing is a tradition of going door to door, wishing neighbors good health, and being rewarded with spiced drinks known as wassail, or with other treats, or with pennies. Reflecting this, the lyrics often refer to the singers being “neighbors’ children,” which we have changed to “merry mummers.”

[3] Father Christmas is a traditional character from English folk plays. I have written two blog posts about the early roots, development, and significance of this character. You can read the first one here, and the second one here.

[4] The opening speech by Father Christmas always begins with traditional lines from mummers’ plays, but soon transitions to an introduction to the current play’s plot. Soon before the play, the Library of Congress held a cybersecurity town hall meeting that was quite long, leading to the play’s first topical reference.

[5] Father Christmas did not traditionally live at the North Pole, but by the time of the mummers’ plays in our collections, that idea was in general circulation in British popular culture–though not mentioned in mummers’ plays themselves. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Father Christmas, for example, lived there in the early 1930s when Tolkien began writing Father Christmas letters to his children. I wrote more about that in the blog post at this link.

[6] The North Pole Film Preservation Board was based on the Library’s National Film Preservation Board.

[7] The North Pole Film Registry is based on the Library of Congress National Film Registry.

[8] NAVPP is of course just the Library’s NAVCC with a PP joke added.

[9] The association of elves and Father Christmas dates to the time of our mummers play texts. For example, in addition to living at the North Pole, Tolkien’s character Father Christmas had a number of elves working for him in professional capacities in the 1930s. We have established various recurring elf characters in our plays, including Tatterjack (a traditional mummers play name).

[10] “Top-shelf” in American usage means the best or highest category, like top-drawer, top-notch, and top-hole. In Britain, however, it developed the meaning of obscure or esoteric books, kept on the top shelf because rarely used or in little demand. In modern British parlance, it often means “pornographic,” because newsagents keep adult titles on a high shelf where kids can’t reach them and they can’t easily be stolen. This multiplicity of meanings adds some nice ambiguty to our mummers play!

[11] Linear Feet is one of our recurring elf characters. The name “Linear Feet” is one of our library jokes; in the library world, it’s a measure of how much shelf space an item or collection uses. Mummers’ play characters sometimes have names consisting of an adjective and a body part–traditional characters include “Big Head” and “Clever Legs.” We thought “Linear Feet” made a good character name for a Library mummers’ play.

[12] Father Christmas’s “dad joke” of leaving the letter L out a word and then saying he prefers it that way because it “includes No L” has become a traditional Christmas joke in our play…sorry!

[13] Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin had a complex relationship in real life. They were close friends and co-founders of United Artists, but there was also rivalry between them. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford are among the most honored actors in the National Film Registry, and of course our small theater in the Madison Building is named for Mary Pickford. To find out more about Mary Pickford, consult the book Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies by Christel Schmidt, and view her lecture about the book at this link! To see which of their films is on the registry, look for them in the Registry’s Brief Descriptions and Expanded Essays.

[14] Some might find it curious that Home Alone (1999) is on the National Film Registry, but none of the many films made out of Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol has been inducted. Of course, this blog features an occasional series about folklife in A Christmas Carol, which you can read here.

[15] In addition to the perennial debate about whether the action flick Die Hard is a Christmas movie, there’s a rivalry among fans of Die Hard and fans of Lethal Weapon, with some saying the latter film deserves more recognition as a holiday action classic. Similarly, in the comedy category, it’s considered an open question whether Trading Places is a Christmas movie, since it’s set at Christmas and features a lot of Christmas imagery but isn’t really about the holiday.

[16] Heat and Moisture were identified as enemies of film stability in “Keeping Cool and Dry,” a white paper about film preservation published 30 years ago by the Library’s Redefining Preservation Task Force.

[17] St. George is a traditional mummers’ play character. This year, in recognition of our Christmas movie theme, we made St. George into George Bailey, the central character in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life, which is of course on the National Film Registry.

[18] “His dying was a mystery and did not come from strife” is a line written for a mummers play by poet and novelist Susan Cooper. Since George Bailey’s “dying” was just the beginning of his movie’s action, I adapted the line for our play. Susan Cooper has participated in the Library’s “Exquisite Corpse Adventure,” which informed my use of the word “adventure.” Susan Cooper has also appeared at the National Book Festival–there’s more at this link!

[19] I decided to put Connor MacLeod in this play because I was struck by the similarity between the Highlander films and mummers plays. In both, people apparently die after being stabbed with swords, but then they magically come back to life (unless their heads are cut off). More than this, they don’t appear to know why they’re fighting. They are characters in a drama whose formulaic nature forces them into duels, time after time. This suggests, of course, that the Highlander series resonates with older traditional culture in interesting ways–who knew?

[20] These terrible reviews in fact pertained to the second film in the series, Highlander 2. This film was so badly received that the rest of the sequels ignored it; plot revelations made in the second film seemingly never occurred in the subsequent ones.

[21] In most of our performances, the audience shouted the catchphrase with us, proving that it’s well remembered after all these years.

[22] “Aliens or something” is again a reference to Highlander 2, in which the immortals were shown to be aliens from planet Zeist.

[23] Of course MacLeod includes two titles of films that are on the National Film Registry, Stop Making Sense and The Fog of War.

[24] This is the author’s favorite joke in this play!

[25] This of course is a reference to George Bailey’s guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody.

[26] Let’s All Go to the Lobby (1951) is probably the best known “snipe” or theatrical movie trailer ever produced, in which animated refreshments including a pack of chewing gum, a box of popcorn, a soft drink cup, and a box of candy sing and dance across the screen, imploring audiences to get themselves some treats. We kept the popcorn and the cup, and dressed John Fenn as a hot dog!

[27] The Doctor is a traditional mummers’ play character. In fact, some scholars argue that the presence of a quack doctor defines a particular genre of death-and-resurrection folk play—the genre to which ours evidently belongs.

[28] This mispronunciation of “wound” is a traditional mummers’ play joke, and we have made it a perennial part of our play. Usually the mistake is made by Father Christmas, but this year we bestowed it upon Charlie Chaplin, and had Father Christmas make the quip about silent movies.

[29] We decided to make the doctor in this play Dr. Zhivago in part because of the movie theme and in part because the actor we intended to play the part, Theadocia Austen, does a good Russian accent. But after the play was written Thea was burdened with a longer-than-expected recovery from surgery, and we recast the role with Allina Migoni, who did a great job!

[30] In Doctor Zhivago, the title character, played by Omar Sharif, attends a Christmas ball and dances with Tonya Gromyko, played by Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’s daughter. The strange coincidence of Dr. Zhivago and Charlie Chaplin appearing together in a Christmas play didn’t occur to me until rehearsals, but when it did I added this reference to the scene.

[31] “Memory, Reason, and Imagination” were the principles on which Thomas Jefferson organized his library, which is the historical kernel of the Library of Congress’s collections. Inspired by this, “Memory, Knowledge and Imagination” were keywords in previous iterations of the Library’s Strategic Plan.

[32] The Doctor in mummers’ plays tends to mention a series of nonsensical diseases. We adapt this list each year. This year we chose as diseases forms of degradation that occur if films and videos are not properly cared for.

[33] In some plays, the Doctor has a highfalutin way of speaking, and claims to cure “all other vandorious diseases.” We liked the idea of “librarious diseases,” which is equally nonsensical but more librarious.

[34] The National Film Preservation Act of 1992 was the impetus for the Library of Congress Film Preservation Plan.

[35] User centered, data driven, and digitally enabled are components of the Library’s strategic plan.

[36] Redefining Film Preservation is indeed the title of the Library of Congress Film Preservation Plan.

[37] I based the Doctor’s cure on a collection item, an unbelievable poster for “Doctor George Stuart’s Botanical Syrup and Vegetable Pills, the Greatest Family Medicine in the World.” The diseases allegedly cured by these medicines include “piles, pimples, pustules, fever, ague, chills, blotches, bruises, burns” and many others. I added “lacerated acetate” and “plasticizer pain” to fit in with the film preservation theme.

[38] The Doctor’s cure not working, and the other character quacking in derision, are traditional components of mummers plays.

[39] We added the idea of a magic incantation to enable another Library joke!

[40] Engage, Inspire and Inform are principal keywords in the Library of Congress mission statement included in the Strategic Plan.

[41] In the alternate reality in which George Bailey is never born, his wife Mary Hatch instead never marries and becomes the town librarian. She is considered an example of the “spinster librarian” stereotype in movies.

[42] We invented the character of Hope for this play. Our longtime mummer Hope O’Keeffe is retiring this year, so we decided to give her a special role in her last play, including a big exit!

[43] “Hope Springs Eternal” is a phrase from Alexander Pope’s 1733 poem “An Essay on Man,” which is so frequently quoted that it has become folklore.

[44] The National Film Registry is not a list of the “best” films, but of films with particular kinds of significance. Doctor Zhivago may continue to be great without ever being named to the registry. See the registry FAQ for about the registry itself.

[45] A “snipe” is a theatrical trailer that is not for a film but for amenities, offers, or policies for the theater itself. Let’s All Go to the Lobby is probably the best known snipe of all.

[46] “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” is in fact on the National Film Registry.  You can read the extended essay on this animated classic at this link.

[47] Zeist is the planet the immortals like MacLeod were said to be from–but only in Highlander 2! Subsequent Highlander films contradicted the Zeist backstory.

[48] “Keep Cool and Dry” once again evokes our film preservation white paper, while The Long Goodbye is another film on the registry.

[49] Hope’s departing “So Long, Farewell” is a quote from The Sound of Music, another film on the National Film Registry.

[50] “Lilliburlero” is a tune first published in John Playford’s 1686 music tutor The Delightful Companion. Many believe it was composed by Henry Purcell, but scholars are not certain as no manuscript survives. It became the tune for a popular satirical song about Ireland in the 17th century, and was used by John Gay in The Beggar’s Opera in the 18th century. By the 19th century it was popular as both a song melody and a dance tune.

[51] “The Gloucestershire Wassail” is a song sung by rural farmworkers in Gloucestershire, England, while visiting and toasting the inhabitants of nearby farms and houses. The words to the song were first published in 1813. One hundred and twenty years later, James Madison Carpenter photographed Gloucestershire wassailers and recorded their song.  His recordings, photos of the wassailers, and manuscripts of the song, are preserved in the AFC archive and now online at this link from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in England. The song proposes Christmas toasts to the inhabitants of a local farm, including the owners (referred to as Master and Mistress), some of the workers, and most importantly the farm animals! The version we sing is derived from various published texts, but such names as “Whitefoot” and “Old Broad,” which were names for farm animals, have been replaced with more generic descriptors such as “the milk cow” and “the ox,” which makes the song more comprehensible to non-farming folk. The Wassailing Bowl was usually a wooden bowl, and was frequently heavily decorated with garlands and other Christmas decorations. See the photo at the beginning of the notes section for an example.

[40] Engage, Inspire and Inform are keywords in the Library of Congress mission statement included in the Strategic Plan.