My office shares a wall with our school clinic. Normally, this means I hear anything from cold-induced sniffles to tall tales of tummy aches.

When it’s quiet, though, I can sometimes hear what’s happening on just the other side of the clinic in the school atrium. Those noises usually consist of giggling girls walking to their next class or small study groups quizzing each other. 

But on one day last winter,  my ear was caught by an unfamiliar noise: it sounded, for all I could tell, like the clinking of a sword. Now, at this point in the day, I was knee-deep in a state report due later that week so I thought I was imagining things. Upon hearing another clink, though, I became thoroughly distracted.

Judging by the clinking and subsequent “oohs” and “ahhhs” the feast had reached its climax. . Indeed, I entered the atrium, looked past forty-five 10th graders in medieval garb, and realized that I had arrived at the perfect moment: right in time to witness the smallest girl in the grade step to the front of the room, pick up a large, sharp axe, and raise it over my husband’s head (now a yearly event in my life, for those curious). 

The room was frozen. Every eye was fixed on her. Then the victim (my husband) cried, “Swing true!”

Perhaps you’ll be relieved to hear that there isn’t some earth-shattering, deep reason to hold a medieval feast. It’s really quite simple.

This scene - where a giant green knight intrudes upon King Arthur’s Christmas feast and challenges anyone there to behead him with an axe - is taken straight from a great poem. It’s one of the strangest and most memorable that our students read. And we like to celebrate the hard work of reading. Though our students enjoy what they read in class, taking the time to celebrate a hallmark book makes for a great day of respite.

I’ve touched on joy as a key element of a classical education before. You can read more about that in my What is Classical Education post, but I’ll sing it until the cows come home. Joyless educators have no business calling themselves classical. It is, beyond doubt, an essential piece of our work.