Don Rouse will be spending this Christmas Eve the same way he has for the last 60 years, blacking his face with cork burned over a candle.

He will then put on his Good Doctor’s costume and meet up with five other Bampton villagers, ready to put on performances of an ancient Mummers Play in households around Witney.

It is a tradition going back into the mists of time, but one that Mr Rouse is proud to have kept alive in his beloved home village of Bampton.

The short two act play, a festive celebration of myth, drama, slapstick and rhyme, has themes going back to the Crusades, while Father Christmas made his first appearance in the 18th century. In Bampton, ‘mummering’ died out in the Second World War, but was revived in 1946.

Mr Rouse, then eleven, joined two years later and has been mummering ever since.

He said: “I love it. It reminds me of how Christmases used to be.

“There wasn’t all that long preparation and buying beforehand. Decorations went up on Christmas Eve and we used to go round to the pubs and the houses to give a performance that is steeped in village traditions. I’m very proud to be still part of it.”

Nowadays, the Bampton Mummers are booked well in advance. They are giving about a dozen performances of their 10-minute show at homes in the area.

Mr Rouse will be joined by five others, his nephew Bruce Piercy, grandson Calum Taylor, Jeff Dando, Toby Perry and Matthew Green who between them act out a variety of characters, including Robin Hood and Little John and St George. The parts, including the words, have been handed down by tradition.

“Some of it is right old gibberish, but it’s fun,” Mr Rouse said.

“It reminds me of that of that World War One saying about the general ordering to send reinforcements, we are going to advance, and down in the trenches it ended up as send three and four pence, we’re going to a dance.

“There’ve been unscripted moments and sometimes it’s difficult to keep a straight face.

“One year we were performing in one of our eleven pubs and the chap who was the knight had to lie still on the floor after being slain. A girl in a very short mini-skirt decided to dance over him. It took a lot of resolve for him to stay dead.”

They are raising money for another village tradition, the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Junketing (Spajers) which provides Christmas goodies and day trips for the elderly. The last two years they have topped £1,000 and hope to make that a tradition as well.

witney@oxfordmail.co.uk