Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Williamsburg Feast Marks Another Year

Photo Credit: Alexander Bernhardt Bloom

By Alexander Bernhardt Bloom | alex@queensledger.com

Many hands make light work, as we know, but not that light when it comes to the lifts required for the Dancing of the Giglio at the Feast of Our Lady Mount Carmel in Williamsburg.

The Giglio weighs upwards of four tons, and towers upwards of seventy feet above the heads of the celebrants come to see it. The broad shoulders upon which it rests, – the Giglio marching, turning on a point, and bouncing to the rhythm of the brass band riding on top – have been carrying it for more than half a century. The Feast and festival have been celebrated on those streets in North Williamsburg for more than a whole one.

It is a major undertaking that is entirely powered by people. Calloused arms extend over flaming grills to tend to sausages and shish kebabs, and conduct sets of tongs in their labor of stuffing sandwiches. Fingers pinch the ends of hand-rolled cigars to safely set their other sides aflame. Others cradle icy oysters waiting to be shucked, while watchful eyes supervise gurgling deep-fryers applying the proper brown to fennel cakes and hunks of calamari.

They are human voices, at high volume, which direct the movement of the mammoth object of devotion that is the Giglio, which brings us back to the sets of broad shoulders which bear its weight.

The participants and patrons of the Mount Carmel Feast have changed year by year during the course of its long history, more so in recent decades, when Williamsburg took a decided turn from the working class neighborhood of immigrants it was to become a chic, hip, desirable one for young professionals.

The organizers of the Feast have made it their work to maintain tradition, but also to integrate the people in the neighborhood whoever they be. And so the faces and foods and music at the street fair have become more diverse. The Masses offered on the days of celebration are held in five different languages. Kids and grandmothers and handlebar-mustached hipsters play skeeball at adjacent stools, the work and play and piety they all join in possessed by many hands.