Christmas Hornpipe
Christmas Hornpipe is an American Country Dance. It was published by Elias Howe in 1862 in The American Dancing Master. Found in Cracking Chestnuts. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Howe writes:
First lady balance to 1st and 2d gentlemen at the same time, swing 3 hands round, 1st gent. balance to 1st and 2d ladies, swing 3, 1st couple down the centre, back and cast off, right and left four
The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1s+L2 form a ring and balance twice |
| 5-8 | Circle left (three) and fall back | |
| A2 | 1-4 | 1s+M2 form a ring and balance twice |
| 5-8 | Circle left (three) and fall back | |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s lead down center |
| 5-6 | Skip back up | |
| 7-8 | Cast off | |
| B2 | 1-8 | Right and left four |
If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.
If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=ChristmasHornpipe
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 by George W. Williams V
My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.