Nordicity is a concept for understanding high and middle latitudes around the world, inside the boreal hemisphere. 1. The lexical unit expresses a global view on natural and cultural northern matters. In the sense given here, nordicity is taken as a canadianism, both in English and French. 2. To study the question of limits and establish a definition of the frigid zone, a ten factors index is devised (1963). Using that tool, one may quantify the number of "Polar Values", or vapos, for any location. The 200 vapos isoline may be used as the southern end of the cold world. Nordicity values applies to three zones, respectively called Middle North, Far North, Extrême North. 3. The nordicity complex is also pertinent inside the temperate zone. That area may be divided into a seasonal nordicity (3 to 5 winter months), south of which is a light hivernity (series of cold days which might be present down to latitude 30). A socio-climatic notion of winter is discussed. The nordicity concept deals with all spatial and thematic areas of the circumnorthern world.

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«Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays c'est l'hiver
Mon jardin ce n'est pas un jardin c'est la plaine
Mon chemin ce n'est pas un chemin c'est la neige
Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays c'est l'hiver»

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Nordicity expresses a dual reality. First of all, as an objective fact, it is measurable in terms of a number of criteria that define a particular region both physically and humanly. Secondly, as a fact psychic, it is the ensemble of representations of the region made by the population.

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If ideas of the North invade us, sometimes leading us astray, then what about ideas for the North? In 1976, a geographer gave us a great idea presented as a humble word: “nordicity”. The strength of his concept lay in part in the fact that it was at the time not only a new idea of the North, but also an idea for the North. Highly pragmatic, Hamelin’s neologism designated the polar level in the boreal hemisphere. But the concept of nordicity also designates a set of mental viewpoints of this region.

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Christmas is thus established in what was already, before the Christian era, the time of the celebrations of light. These celebrations of the winter solstice encouraged the resurrection of the sun, the course of which, at that time of the year, was at its shortest. That is why enlightenment was encouraged in all its forms.

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Celebrations, which constitute a privileged moment of our lives may, at first sight, divert us from daily realities and give us images of social life too exceptional and too partial to be valid. But, insofar as they institute a particular and extraordinary time, festivals are separated from routine and, by contrast, make the multiple components of the temporal dimension of human life more clearly perceptible. In this regard, we have sought to identify the meaning and the importance that the particularly privileged part the year known as the “holidays” holds for our lives. For purposes of clarification, we will first sketch the theoretical model that we used to raise the general problem of social time.

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To anyone of French-Canadian descent growing up in the former mill towns of New England, the sight of pork pie at the Christmas table is likely something you’ve never questioned. But as with most traditional and iconic foods, this dish has a long history.

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For our ancestors, the holiday season begins about three weeks before Christmas. Mothers with their daughters prepare a variety of donuts, pies, cakes, patties, stews, meat pies and roasts. They start by baking the pastries and finish with the meat dishes a few days before Christmas Eve.

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The nineteenth century transformed Christmas into a celebration of the middle-class family. As a result it likewise installed the child at the centre of the secular rite and attributed a new role to them, as revealing changes to social and familial status. The principal actor of the ritual puts the adult to the test, and has become over a century and a half the recipient of infinite giving without reciprocity.

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Be cause of the seasonal fluctuations in the commercial economy, win ter
meant entirely different things to the inhabitants of British North America in the pre-industrial period. To the successful merchant and his family winter represented a time of entertainment, sport, cultural activity or, at worst, boredom. To his summer labourer, winter was synonymous with hardship: cold, hunger, and gloomy unemployment or underemployment until the welcome return of summer. ln the towns where the extremes of wealth and destitution were most commonly found cheek by jowl, the contrast between the amusements of the weil-to-do and the privations of the indigent classes was particularly stark in winter.

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Mummers usually travet from house to house in groups of two to ten, with children and adults of both sexes participating (Chiaramonte). The residents of the house attempt to guess the identity of the visiting mummers, who will usually unmask if their identity is correctly determined. Adult mummers, especially the males, are then usually offered a drink of alcohol by the host of the house.

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This article critically examines instances of blackface in Newfoundland Christmas mummering. Following Peter Narváez’s call for analysis of expressive culture from folklore and cultural studies approaches, I explore the similarities between these two cultural phenomena. I see them as attempts to work out racial and class tensions among the underclasses dwelling in burgeoning seaport towns along the North American seaboard that were intimately connected, at that time, through heavily-trafficked shipping routes. I offer a reanalysis of the tradition that goes beyond unconscious, symbolic ritualism to one that examines mummering in a historical context. As such, I present evidence which troubles widely held understandings of Christmas mummering as an English-derived calendar custom.

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The first week of December, 1983, Newfoundland radio Stations were swamped with caliers' requests to play a new Christmas song that had recently been aired throughout the province. [...] "Any Mummers Allowed In?"- or simply "The Mummers Song" as it quickly became known - [...] was the most obvious indication of a growing nativistic movement within Newfoundland that had focused on mummering as a powerful identity symbol of cultural revival.

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In 1855, Acadian immigrants from the Magdalen Islands disembarked at Natashquan with the custom of running, masked and disguised, in the middle of Lent. Present everywhere in Quebec in the 19th century, it slowly disappeared in the 1920s. As if by magic, it remained rooted in some insular quarters: Île-aux-Grues, the Magdalen Islands and Natashquan; and, in Nova Scotia, it is alive in the Cheticamp area. [...] What makes them still run in mid-Lent in 2007…? While there is nothing left to defy at Lent, this remains an intense time in social life, which promotes communication by providing dreaminess and marvel. The youth take advantage of this and mingle with seniors. To raise a glass, to remove the mask, after having been incognito in an environment where everyone is a relative, friend or neighbor is a challenge taken up only at mid-Lent. This must be marginal resistance…

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Of all the popular festivals of the past, Carnival remains the most lively and distinguished. It embodies and symbolizes popular celebration. Over time, Carnival seems to have “colonized” many other festivals, giving them its spirit, style and form when it has not quite simply absorbed them. What has enabled this extension of carnival rites? What has guaranteed this survival?

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A young Montreal lawyer, Robert D. McGibbon, a member of the Montreal Snow Shoe Club, has the idea of organizing a sports week during the cold season, where all the — English-speaking — clubs in the city will be invited. We are then in 1882. The project is greeted with enthusiasm by his fellow citizens. The year 1883 saw the holding of the first winter carnival in North America.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze the challenges and issues surrounding the creation of a community activity within the Québec Carnival, the “Revengeance” of the duchesses intended to ensure a reclaiming on the part of residents of this festival judged by many to be too tourist oriented. Originating in the course of calling into question the meaning of the festival, and taking its inspiration freely from the “tradition” of the Carnival Duchesses, which was set aside in 1996, the “Revengeance” of the duchesses proposes new events not officially recognized in the official Carnival program. We then raise questions regarding the ways residents from Québec City’s neighbourhoods take back the festival and the uses of Web 2.0 in the construction today of cultural and identity dynamics.

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Carnival plays an important role in the economic and social life of the Quebec region. The economic activities flowing from this winter attraction are many and varied; research on the question is interesting and should be developed. We focus on two main themes: the promotion of tourism by Carnival and job creation. [...] The temporary jobs provide work for a workforce that, without it, would be unemployed at this time of the year. The investment in tourism is profitable and Quebec must base part of its development on this fact: the tourism industry must be considered as an economic activity in the same way as any other industry.

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Based on semiotic theory and extensive fieldwork in Quebec’s Basse Ville, the Chambre de commerce and the Carnival’s Organizing Board, my paper explores the relationships between the Carnival’s identity politics and economic actors. The Carnival has the ambiguous position to be both an expression of reconstructed local culture and a tourist enterprise promoting the “québécois winter”. Its official image however, has been debased in the “anti-carnival zone” which expresses an alternative subculture in opposition to the dominant discourse. Finally, the modern carnival no longer represents a “total and coherent” universe (Bakhtine), but assorted identity politics in a global economy.

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