New Videos Online: Glencairn Christmas Sing and “Christmas in the Castle” Tour

Glencairn Museum News | Number 11, 2020

Mildred and Raymond Pitcairn sit at the center of their Christmas table, surrounded by family members. The photograph was taken in Glencairn’s Upper Hall in 1961.

Like many other places around the world, museums have suffered losses this year. At Glencairn, circumstances have made it necessary to place our 12th annual World Nativities exhibition online instead of offering the usual in-person experience. In addition, both the Glencairn Christmas Sing and our “Christmas in the Castle” tour have moved online as video programs.

But these changes contain a hidden blessing. As free online resources, these seasonal Glencairn offerings have reached thousands more people worldwide than would have been possible as in-person experiences. We’re thrilled that so many who will never have the opportunity to travel to Glencairn have been able to “visit us” virtually this holiday season. And perhaps other people who view these programs online will be inspired to visit us for the first time—in person—next year. Museums in 2020 have been thinking creatively about how to expand our global reach, and that’s good for everybody.

Glencairn Christmas Sing Online Concert

This year—due to the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic—the 84-year old annual tradition of the Glencairn Christmas Sing has continued in a special online program, with musicians performing music familiar to generations of Glencairn audiences. This unique concert video features the Glencairn Horns, the Cathedral Quartet, 1 IN 2, and a variety of vocalists and speakers. Making the program especially festive and meaningful are glimpses of the Great and Upper Halls decorated for Christmas, as well as Christmas art and Nativities from the Museum’s collection. Also included are re-enactments of long-standing family Christmas traditions from the time when Glencairn was the home of the Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn family.

The Glencairn Horns has its roots in Raymond Pitcairn’s friendship with Leopold Stokowski, the legendary conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1919 Stokowski asked Anton Horner, the first horn player, to arrange several works for brass quintet to be played at the dedication of Bryn Athyn Cathedral. After Glencairn was built, beginning in 1939, Horner himself directed the Glencairn Horns for many years during the Christmas season.

In Glencairn: The Story of a Home, E. Bruce Glenn, a nephew of the Pitcairns, shared his memories of the Glencairn Christmas Sing:

“As the horns played their peaceful Christmas harmonies from above, daughters and nieces, and in later years granddaughters, came with tapers to where Mildred Pitcairn sat dressed in a long gown of red velvet holding a candle. Lighting their tapers, they moved about the candelabra and up to the gallery, till the whole great hall was filled with the glow and perfume of candlelight. The host sat quietly beside his wife in a jacket of matching red, sharing with family and friends the sphere of Christmas. Beyond the arch, in the living room apse could be glimpsed the traditional representation scenes: the angel hovering above the shepherds, the Infant with Mary and Joseph in the stable, and the Wise Men following the star” (p. 150). 

Edwin Herder, Glencairn Museum’s Creative Designer, and Christine McDonald, Content Designer, produced, directed, and edited this video together. According to Herder,

“I have such clear memories of the candle lighting at the Glencairn Sing from my early years, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When we found out that we were going to produce the Sing as an online concert this year, recreating the many candles used at Glencairn when the Pitcairns lived here was very important to us. While obtaining the large candelabra, and filming them in the Great Hall with lit candles, was relatively easy, lining the balcony with candles was a bit more of a challenge. We chose to do it ‘virtually.’ To begin with, we filmed some of the girls pretending to light the candles. Then we filmed a candle, both lit and unlit, against a green screen (often used in film production for special effects), approximating the angles that matched the footage we’d already shot. Working in Adobe After Effects, the green background was stripped away, and the two versions of the candle were joined together. Then, working in Adobe Premiere Pro, the candles were added to the scene, resized, repositioned, and then duplicated. The last step was turning the candles on at the appropriate time!” (Click here to see a short film clip showing how this was accomplished.)

“Christmas in the Castle” Online Video Tour

Also new for 2020, our “Christmas in the Castle” online video tour invites you to journey back through time to explore the holiday traditions of the Pitcairn family in Glencairn, their remarkable 20th-century castle. For forty years (1940s to 1970s) the Pitcairns celebrated Christmas at Glencairn with a concert featuring members of the Philadelphia Orchestra (see above), a large three-part Nativity scene, a decorated tree in the Great Hall reaching beyond the second-floor balcony, and a Christmas meal in the Upper Hall. The tour concludes with a telling of the Christmas story, illustrated by Nativity art at Glencairn from the Raymond Pitcairn collection. The content for this video has been adapted from the “Christmas in the Castle” guided tour offered each year at Glencairn. The research and script were developed by Ed Gyllenhaal (Glencairn’s Curator) and Kirsten Gyllenhaal (Museum Researcher). The video was produced, directed, and edited by Edwin Herder and Christine McDonald, with McDonald doing the voiceover.

For a full list of all of Glencairn’s 2020 Christmas offerings, click here.

(CEG)

A complete archive of past issues of Glencairn Museum News is available online here.