Here’s all the gear that I hauled through the rain to the car about a week ago, then into the Groton Public Library, then back to my car, then back into the house at the end of the night. (And that’s Mish sharpening his claws on the amp).

The performing life is a heady mix of glamour and grunt-work. For 90 minutes, I spun tales and songs and poems round a room full of wonderful people. We swirled through mysteries and transformations, we met kings and queens and wise women, wild geese and ghostly horses, ambitious birds and a witch or two, and we journeyed over the snow to bring supper to a hungry man and gathered round the manger to admire the beautiful child. I harped and fluted and whistled (two kinds) and honked away on the melodeon. We laughed and sang and shouted together.

And at the end of it all, we all felt warmer and more festive and perhaps even a bit more charitable towards our fellow creatures. Revelry is good for us in every way, I think. One 12-year-old said to me, “I didn’t want to come tonight, but – wow, I’m glad I did.” (I’ll be carrying that in my pocket for a long while).

I love what I get to create with the people who gather for these shows. I love that I get to be a kind of ambassador for the holidays and embody my dear Dickensian fantasies; if I could wear a wreath of lighted candles on my head, I would. But I’m not far short of that in my red velvet. And inside my chest I’m beaming out a thousand-watt bulb of “peace on earth, goodwill to all.”

The fact that the evening starts and ends with fifty million trips to the car, trying to keep my nice shoes dry, hauling the heavy stuff and the light stuff that also needs to go – well, let me just say: it’s worth it.

With all my heart, it’s worth it!