“Mumming might as well be a cult,” my 17-year-old sister, a non-Greenwich Academy Girl, told me over the weekend.  “It’s dark, it’s all the same music every year, the girls get up and stand like a painting and can’t sit down until the lights go on again at the end.  Weird.”

As I heard this annual GA ceremony described in such stark terms, I couldn’t help but agree: it sounds rather cultish.  But I still smile every time I get my Mumming invitation – even if I can’t attend – and remember the beautiful aura of peace and release that descends on the end-of-semester student body, which sings Christmas carols, listens to the “Christmas story” in candlelight, and waves the year goodbye with friends and family.

And it made me think.  Lots of traditions around the holidays are fairly cultish, in one way or another.  We have the cult of Santa Claus, the cult of Holiday Shopping, the Cult of Baking and Overeating, and any number of others.  The rituals that accompany each cult are precise and we miss them when they change, either by reasons controlled or uncontrollable.  We feel a pang whether we’ve decided that the extra $100 could be better spent buying food for a local shelter, or if we’ve lost a loved one unexpectedly before the Holiday Season could burst on the scene. 

The “pang factor” makes me believe that these rituals, cultish or not, are imperative to the peace of mind and participation in community that we associate with the warmth and love of the holidays.  It could be the mulled wine or the spiked eggnog.  But in truth, I think it’s the knowledge that our traditions hold within them the memories, emotions and thoughts that make us who we are, and who we will become.  

So call them overrated and overdone.  But traditions probably merit the warm and fuzzy feeling we associate with holiday time, along with that click of the mouse that keeps me firmly situated on the Mumming mailing list.

Over a late brunch* this afternoon, my roommate and I got into a conversation regarding the lack of space in NYC.  She talked about her growing desire, as the streets become more crowded with holiday window-shoppers and the standard walking pace picks up to balance the drop in temperature, to sneak off the treadmill and enjoy some warm cocoa and a good book by the fire.  No more subways, no more elbows and backpacks in the head, just peace, quiet and space to breathe and think.  I couldn’t help but agree.

But walking home, I started to realize the great personal irony of our “space” conversation.  Fairfield County, where I spent most of my winters until college, has tons of space.  I had every opportunity to drink hot cocoa by the fire with a book, and to enjoy the peacefulness of real quiet rather than the constant drone of traffic and movement.

And at points, I took advantage of this gift of quiet.  But as I’ve mentioned, I also couldn’t wait to move on to a new, urban space once my GA experience came to a close. In fact, by the end of my GA days, I remember feeling fairly enclosed (as I think many teenagers do), and that the vast amount of space around me made little difference because it no longer echoed my sentiments internally.

Coming back to my roommate’s comments, I agree in many respects about Manhattan: the hustle and bustle is overwhelming, challenging, and at points, obnoxious.

But even in the calamity, I know that I have found slivers of internal space that, to me, far exceed the physical space of Fairfield County.  These slivers come from the energy to be gained by encountering people with an unparalleled diversity of experience; from discovering my favorite room in the Met or being wowed by a show at the Public Theater; by stumbling into a yoga class and finding a surprising sanctuary; and by learning that creating internal quiet is a skill to be cultivated and enjoyed to the fullest.

And so, equally ironically, it seems that the massive constraints of physical space dealt by NYC somehow enable an exciting discovery of the kind of internal space necessary for the peace we desire.  If only people on the sidewalks could swing their briefcases just a little bit less…

* Brunch, by the way, is the “must do” activity of the weekend in NYC.  I found it kind of odd at first, but at this point I’m a big fan – try the place we went today if you’re in town – “Friend of Farmer” at 19th and Irving Place – yum.

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As a “GA Girl” who, like many others of our brand, decided to move to The Big City after plenty of upper-level education, I make this observation with the help of the French: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I expected Manhattan to be a tried and true path towards mixing things up a little. After moving steadily away from Greenwich with college in DC and grad school in England (I was a little over zealous on the ‘away’ factor there), I had a sense that my move to The City would be the next logical step in my migration onwards and upwards. While Greenwich Academy and the tight-knit community of Greenwich laid an unbeatable foundation, I was ready the day of graduation to see what the rest of the world had to offer. Since New York City, by many standards, is comprised of the rest of the world, I felt there could be no better place.

But, alas, my Manhattan experience to date has been by no one’s estimate a radical dose of the new. As it turns out, Greenwich Academy follows you wherever you go.

Now some of this is a product of personal circumstances. I work very close by to Grand Central, which means that on any given day, I see former teachers, parents of classmates, or classmates themselves either galloping through the lobby of my building or rushing past the station’s famous clock to catch a train. But when I venture out of my Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood into Murray Hill for a dinner or trip to the bars, it is inevitable that either GA girls or Brunswick boys will be chatting away with each other at a neighboring table or hovering in front of the flat screen TV. If I get on the 6 Train to head to the Upper East Side, the chances are good that there will be a recognizable face.

In a word, it appears that the movement of newly professional Greenwich Academy-ites to Manhattan represents the recreation of the social patterns, cliques and classes of yore, transplanted thirty miles down the road. In one way, this is all very comforting. But in another, I can’t help but ask… Should I move to Queens?

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