[Sca-cooks] Early Feast?

[Stephen Bloch]

>I'm curious about the concept of starting feast in the late
>afternoon. When do you have court?

At this particular event, a BRIEF court was held between courses of 
the feast.  If you had a lot of court business, you'd need to 
re-think things.

>Our barony hosts Candlemas each year. It is slightly different
>from most Ansteorran events because it is traditionally a day
>event instead of a camping event. We usually hold classes and the
>A&S competition followed by court and feast, then (time
>permitting) revelry. There is usually only pick-up fighting, if
>any, at this event.
>
>In the debate on the EK list, what were the pros and cons?

Pro: It's more period.  I think.  My impression is that medieval 
gentry tended to eat the main meal of the day in the afternoon (when 
the sun is still up), not the evening.  Unfortunately, I don't 
remember where I read that; has anybody on this list done real 
research on it?

Con: It gives the cooks less time to prepare the feast, and (in 
particular) less time to recover from unexpected disasters.

Pro: It provides more time for cleanup, dancing, etc. after feast and 
makes dancing less likely to be cancelled entirely because everything 
else ran late and we have to be out of the site half an hour ago.

Con: People aren't used to it.  In particular, people who are 
accustomed to leave immediately after feast will still do so.  (For 
that matter, people who are accustomed to leave immediately after the 
TOURNEY -- that being, after all, the only reason anyone goes to an 
SCA event -- will still do so, and will feel unsatisfied that they 
didn't get their God-given eight hours of fighting.)

There were probably some other issues discussed, but they're not 
springing to mind at the moment.
-- 
                                    John Elys
         (the artist formerly known as mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib)
                                mka Stephen Bloch
                                sbloch at adelphi.edu