~Chronicled by Dianna of the Silver Shore

Few and far between are those good gentles of the Kingdom of An Tir who have not heard about Ursulmas. The premiere event of the Barony of Aquaterra--mundanely known as Snohomish County, Washington State--Ursulmas takes place each January and is one of the few SCA tournaments to take place in the An Tirian winter.

But why "Ursulmas"? Why exactly did the Barony of Aquaterra decide to name their main event such?

The answer lies far back in history, in the very beginning days of Aquaterra. Soon after the territory became an official Shire, it was decided to hold a first event. One of the households making up the majority of the populace back then had access to the Snohomish National Guard Armory, and that first event was held there. A number of guests were friends from the Barony of Madrone to the south, and once they heard that we wanted to put on a tournament (it was originally going to be in the springtime), His Majesty King Torgul and his squires thought it would be much nicer to have Aquaterra hold their tourney in the Armory in the wintertime since they had access to a large building that could house an indoors tourney. They approached Lord Robyrt at a fighter's practice with their idea, and Lord Robyrt agreed that it was worth pursuing. Thus the once-springtime tourney was then hashed out to be a winter's one at one of the meetings at House Watersyde.

The year was 1982, in the grey month of November, and sitting at Lord Robyrt's dining-room table happened to be a then 16-year-old girl listening to the various ideas bandied about--most of which were along the theme of "Mid-Winter's Tourney" and "Mid-Hibernation Tourney". Among the populace at the time was one Aldadil Componere, who carried about with him everywhere a teddy bear that he dearly loved. He thought the "theme" of our winter tourney should have something to do with teddy bears, and so everyone there had been brainstorming names dealing with bears and what bears do--but Lord Robyrt was getting upset over the various twists on hibernation they'd been coming up with so far.

Now the girl had been recently caught up in the stories of King Arthur and his knights as told by Howard Pyle, and knew a bit about various medieval saints and how such holidays as Michaelmas were important benchmarks to Middle Ages folk as they dealt with the various chores and duties about the year. "Why would Aquaterra be holding a feast and tourney at such an odd time of the year?" the girl asked herself, then thought of an answer: "Because it's an important local holiday, in honor of a local saint." She didn't want to use a real saint--that seemed wrong, after all--so she got to thinking some more. With all the talk about trying to use Aldadil's theme of bears, and there was a Saint Ursula for real and her name came from the Latin for "bear". . . So what if there was a local male saint whose name was a
variation of Ursula's name?

Well, the idea was an idea, but the girl didn't think it was that great of an idea. Too shy to just blurt it out, she turned instead to use her mother as a sounding board. "Hey, Mom, what if we called it 'Ursulmas'--you know, 'Ursul's Mass'--and 'The Feast of Saint Ursul'?" she asked.

As it turned out, Mom liked the idea--and so did the rest of the folk sitting around the dining room table once the girl explained her reasoning behind it. "Ursulmas" became the name of Aquaterra's winter tourney, and the girl ended up winning a nice, little, dark wooden bowl with a handle for naming the tourney--and she hadn't even known there was a contest going on to name the tourney until she got the prize.

So now the tourney had a name, but the girl thought a bit more on what she'd started. "So why was Ursul so great?" she wondered--and from that wondering came the first story. At the time, Aquaterra didn't have many heavy fighters, so if anything "happened" to the fair ladies, we'd not have a champion to take up our cause. Ursul became that champion--completely within our imaginations, of course--and thus he was thought of as all that was good and chivalrous, eager to defend the honor of Aquaterra's ladies. The girl eventually put together a tale of Saint Ursul, and then wrote it out on a poster-sized parchment scroll. Sadly, the scroll she did--as well as the three others following it--are long gone, but the text has been preserved. Others have added to Saint Ursul's legend--while the girl only wrote four stories, others have written two more since.

From that time forward, Aquaterra has embraced its make-believe saint. The cover of the Murmurs often features bears or even Ursul himself on the cover for the January issue, and every year there's "Saint Ursul's Crusade" to collect stuffed bears for police and emergency services to give out to children in distress. Ursulmas itself has become one of the "must-do" events for An Tirians, with usually Their Majesties in attendance. And through it all, Saint Ursul is
there, Aquaterra's mascot, the noble and chivalrous protector of women forever locked in the form of a walking, talking bear in chainmail bearing a sword and shield. And upon his shield is emblazoned his arms, the original design of the arms for Aquaterra itself.