January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
cup match / Recognizing our heritage
More than a match: Our one national occasion
All of that means that it's Cup Match time, which translates, in Bermuda-speak, into the definition of mid-summer in Bermuda.
Many years ago, my grandfather - Joseph Talbot - played as wicketkeeper for the St George's team. That's why I'm a St George's man today. My grandfather played in the days when Cup Match was an unofficial holiday. He played in the days when the people who had good reason to celebrate Emancipation Day took time off work, took their families - in his case my Grandmother and their three children - and went to one end or the other to play the game.
Living in Devonshire, they probably travelled to St George by horse-bus and to Somerset by a combination of bus and ferry. Or, perhaps they went by train, since the Devonshire train-stop was within easy walking of their Derwent Lane house.
I think it was in 1927 that my grandfather won a cup for 'best wicketkeeper'. I'm not sure of the year now, because that small silver cup was damaged - generational damage - by a great-grandson or great grand-daughter or by both. But my grandfather was a Cup Match winner.
I prefer to 'do' Cup Match by listening to the 'Voice of Summer'. For me, it's the voice, it's the style, it's the sense and feel of the occasion with all the peculiar and unique Bermudian nuances that pour out into the airwaves and that sometimes come through the 'off mike' side noises, that is so purely Bermudian. Even though not physically and contiguously, it's the one national occasion when all Bermuda joins in one common event.
It's Bermuda and it's Cup Match!
This year there was a new event. I first wrote about the need for this kind of event in August 1996 - ten years ago. I wrote then, that there should be a national church service that celebrated Emancipation Day and that it should be held in Cobb's Hill Methodist Church - the 'Church that the slaves built by moonlight'.
This year, one hundred and seventy-two years after 1834's August 1 Emancipation Day, we finally recognized our heritage by having a nationally sponsored service in that church.
I attended. I had to. In the sight of others, I may have fallen off the good Methodist path that I was set on by my family; but I've never cut my attachment to the church; and I certainly haven't cut my link to my heritage.
Sunday night's service in Cobb's Hill Methodist Church saw the small church packed with some two hundred people. From all that I know of that first Emancipation Day, the service itself was the same kind of celebration that Bermudian historian Cyril Packwood described in his book Chained on the Rock.
Packwood wrote: "This peaceful day found most Blacks attending religious services in churches throughout Bermuda."
He went on: "However the most joyful service of all was held at Cobb's Hill Wesleyan Church in Warwick…"
Sunday night's service with its liturgical dancers and its choral roll-call of spirituals was a "joyful service" of thanksgiving.
At the end of the service, during the few darkened moments when the only light was the light coming from three flickering candles, sitting touching a stone wall that had been fashioned by the hands of men who were my forebears, I was deeply and strongly in touch and in tune with my roots and a part of my Bermuda heritage. I came away from that service feeling good about all the changes that have come about since that first Emancipation Day.
This year, the Emancipation Day service is the start to Cup Match week and Cup Match itself makes the whole week extra special to me. I hope it is for you - too. Enjoy.
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