CHRISTMAS came early to Port Erin residents thanks to Rushen Silver Band.
On Thursday evening the brass band played a range of Christmas carols in the streets.
The band included cornet player Juan Cottier, who grew up in the island but now lives in Norway.
Juan and his six-year-old son Joe came over to spend Christmas with their family in Queen’s Road, Port St Mary.
Sixty years ago it was the band’s vice-president and Juan’s dad Ian Cottier who played in the band while Ian’s dad Joe knocked on the doors collecting money for the band’s funds.
On Thursday, the tradition moved down a couple of generations, with Juan playing while Ian and Joe carried the collection buckets.
Ian said: ‘With my son, Juan and my grandson, Joe, out carolling with me, this was Christmas the way I remember it.
‘The band – the Rushen Silver Band, of course – old familiar faces, all well remembered locally, who step out of the shadows around the bandroom over the vicarage stable to set off carolling round the parish.
‘Leslie Cooil, our conductor, Bobby Bridson, Thomas Clague humping his E flat bass along, Ernie Broadbent, arriving with his double B, just a little bit late. “You carry on, boys, and I’ll catch you up,” he once said – and it was the music he was talking about.’
Ian said the sound of a band playing Christmas carols has a very real emphasis on Christmas as a community experience, adding that local communities showed a strong support for the band.
He said the collections from carolling were an important source of revenue for the band: ‘Any support the local community can give the band is absolutely essential.
‘It’s my firm belief communities with a band should cherish and support it because if they lost it, it would be something really important gone out of the life of the community.’
The band started life as the Surby Band in the 1930s and was renamed the Rushen Silver Band in 1949.