The 43nd annual Re-Rooters Day Ceremony

The 43rd annual Re-Rooters Day Ceremony to purge the extractive global economy and civic society with ritualized community participation

Date & Time: Wednesday, January 7, 2026, 4:00 pm EST

Location: Breakwater Hotel, East End, Provincetown Harbor, Massachusetts USA

In the darkest days and the darkest nights of a New England winter and a national malaise, after the “Twelve Days of Stockpiling” of the consumptive holidays, an assembly of people will  cluster together on the sand flats in Provincetown Harbor to sing, chant and purge personal, political and psychic detritus from the previous year. It’s January 7, 2026 and the president of the IRS (International Re-Rooters Society), Jay Critchley, will once again officiate over this deep-rooted, historic, global ritual – 4:00 pm, Breakwater Hotel, East End, Provincetown Harbor

The ceremony is open to the public who are requested to bring something non-toxic to burn on the tree/boat.

This post-Christmas, post-consumptive binging start up was born in 1983 at the Provincetown dump when Critchley created a forest of discarded Christmas trees and stood them up in the piles of wrapping paper, ribbons, turkey bones and garbage.  For 42 years, the annual community ritual has been enacted in Provincetown Harbor on January 7, a purging of political and personal distress from the year gone by. The mission of the IRS is to re-root to and embrace the earth body and all of our human and more-than-human relatives.

In preparation for the 43rd Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, the artist  builds a makeshift boat and compiles words, ideas and extrapolates from the evolving language of the year from various media sources and writings, beginning in the fall. The words form the basis of the theme and content of the ceremony, culminating in the “Ten Commandments” call and response.

Previous themes include: Carbon Captured Brologarchs, 2025, Carbon Rapture, 2024; Grass-fed Capitalism, 2023; Meta-purse, 2022; Viral Warming, 2021; Extractive Democracy, 2020; Oil My Lips,1991; Free ‘rade, 2002; Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, 1994; Sports Futility Vehicles, 1999; and 2013’s Pistol Cliff; ). The ceremony is officiated by the artist, with song, ranting, chanting and the placement of participants’ discarded messages on the tree/boat. The rite concludes with the dramatic burning of a recycled Christmas tree on the vessel, sent out into the harbor at sunset.