Christmas Deferred

Under the towering, mossy oaks of Bayou du Large, La. they finally got around to celebrating Christmas, last Sunday. A tinseled tree glittered in the little white chapel of St. Andrew's Episcopal Mission. Children solemnly posed in a tableau of the Nativity. The young Rev. Clarence R. Haden Jr., rector of St. Matthew's Church in nearby Houma, preached a Yuletide sermon to some 100 people.

Reason for the belated festival: almost all of the villagers are trappers. On Dec. 25 they are in the neighboring swamps trapping muskrat. The season does not end until late February.

Twenty-one years ago the Episcopal rector at Houma heard about the shy folk of Bayou du Large, learned they were not Roman Catholics, had little education, no church. He started St. Andrew's Mission, taught the trappers' families how to read and write.

The first delayed Christmas celebration was held in 1928. They liked it. The annual event soon drew so many sightseers that many of the villagers were crowded out of the chapel. Now the date of the festival is kept a local secret.

Bayou du Large's people, blond and blue-eyed, are a striking contrast to the usual brunet Louisianians. Most of the villagers are of English-Scottish descent; possibly their forebears came from ships captured by Jean Lafitte's pirates in the early 19th Century. Some of the oldsters recall their parents speaking of origins "up North." The villagers drawl their words more like Kentuckians than Louisianians, use the expression "a fur piece" to describe a considerable distance. When they are not trapping, they fish.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.