Ask anyone when the British year begins and you will get a different answer. There is 1 January on the calendar, but there is also Twelfth Night, when the greenery comes down and the wassail cup goes round; Candlemas, when the last winter candles are lit; and May Day, when the hawthorn finally opens. None of these customs survives in perfect form, and that is part of their charm. What follows is a month-by-month guide to the dates that still carry weight, with enough detail to help you take part rather than simply read about it.
Winter: Wassailing, Plough Monday and Candlemas
The orchard wassail is the great midwinter custom of the cider counties. It usually falls on Twelfth Night, though a number of orchards keep the old date of 17 January, and the shape of the ceremony is much the same either way. Cider or apple juice is carried out to the oldest tree, soaked toast is laid in the fork of the branches, and the company makes as much noise as it can manage — singing, shouting, beating pots, and in some places firing a shotgun through the upper branches. The point is to wake the tree and see off anything that might spoil the coming crop. Verses are sung, cider is poured round the roots, and everyone retreats indoors.
House wassailing is the quieter cousin: a bowl of spiced ale carried from door to door with a song, and the hope of a little cake or coin in return.
Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night, marked the return to field work. Ploughs were decorated and dragged from house to house by plough jacks, and the Molly dancers of East Anglia still perform around this date. In Shetland, the last Tuesday of January brings Up Helly Aa, a torchlit procession ending with a replica longship set alight.
Candlemas on 2 February closes the season. It shares its date with Imbolc and, in Irish and Scottish tradition, with St Bride's Day, when a cross woven from rushes was hung over the door and a bed of straw laid out for the saint. The weather lore is worth knowing:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight.
Spring: Pancakes, Pace Egging and May Day
Shrove Tuesday shifts with Easter, falling forty-seven days before it. The pancake is the obvious marker, but the older customs are odder: skipping in the street, football matches played through whole towns, and the Hare Pie Scramble at Hallaton in Leicestershire. Mothering Sunday comes three Sundays later — the fourth in Lent — when servants were given the day to visit their home church and family, carrying a simnel cake.
Easter brings pace egging in the north, where children went from door to door with decorated eggs and a short play, and egg rolling on hilltops. Then comes 1 May. May Day is the busiest folk date in the calendar: hawthorn brought indoors, a maypole danced, a Jack in the Green paraded through the streets, the Obby Oss circling Padstow. Helston's Flora Day follows on 8 May.
A note on local versions
Almost every custom here has several regional forms, and the local one is the one that matters. If you want to join a wassail or a May Day, ask at the village pub, the parish council or the local museum. Someone will know who organises it and whether newcomers are welcome.
Summer: Midsummer Fires and Well Dressing
Midsummer's Eve, 23 June, and St John's Day, 24 June, are fire festivals. Bonfires were lit on hills, herbs — St John's wort, vervain, mugwort — were gathered and hung over doorways, and the Cornish midsummer bonfires are still lit. Derbyshire's well dressing season runs through the summer, when springs and wells are decorated with pictures made from petals, leaves and seeds pressed into clay. Oak Apple Day on 29 May, kept with oak leaves and a certain amount of mockery, is the other summer date worth noting.
Autumn: Harvest Home, Halloween and Bonfire Night
Lammas on 1 August opened the harvest, matched in Ireland by Lughnasa gatherings on hillsides and the picking of bilberries. By September the reaping was done and harvest home was celebrated with a supper for the workers, the last sheaf plaited into a corn dolly and kept until the following year. Michaelmas, 29 September, was a quarter day: rents paid, geese eaten, hiring fairs held for farm servants looking for winter work.
Halloween on 31 October descends from Samhain, the turn into the dark half of the year. The turnip lantern — carved in Ireland and Scotland long before pumpkins arrived — was carried to frighten off wandering spirits, and guisers went from house to house in disguise, sometimes singing in exchange for food. Souling fell on the days either side, with soul cakes given in return for prayers for the dead. Bonfire Night on 5 November sits oddly alongside these older customs, and Martinmas on 11 November was the traditional day for killing the winter pig.
A Year of Dates at a Glance
- 5–6 January — Twelfth Night; house wassailing, greenery taken down
- 17 January — Old Twelfth Night; orchard wassails in the cider counties
- First Monday after Twelfth Night — Plough Monday
- 2 February — Candlemas and Imbolc
- Shrove Tuesday — pancakes, skipping, Shrovetide football
- Fourth Sunday in Lent — Mothering Sunday
- 1 May — May Day; 8 May — Helston Flora Day
- 23–24 June — Midsummer bonfires and St John's wort
- 1 August — Lammas and Lughnasa
- 29 September — Michaelmas
- 31 October — Halloween and Samhain; 2 November — All Souls
- 5 November — Bonfire Night; 11 November — Martinmas
- 21–22 December — winter solstice
- Christmas to Twelfth Night — mumming plays and the Mari Lwyd in south Wales
Keeping the Calendar for Yourself
You do not need a group, a costume or anyone's permission to mark most of these dates. Start with one.
- Choose a date that sits near your own birthday or a family anniversary; you are far more likely to remember it.
- Look for the local version before the national one. Parish records, county folklore collections and local history society journals will tell you what happened within a few miles of your door.
- Go as a spectator first. Wassails, Molly dances and bonfire processions are usually glad of an audience, and you will pick up the etiquette — when to join the singing, when to stand back — by watching.
- Keep it small and repeatable. A bowl of spiced apple juice on Twelfth Night, soul cakes on 2 November, a lantern in the window at Halloween.
Two practical points. Customs involving fire involve real fire: check whether the event is ticketed and stewarded, follow the organisers' instructions, and keep children and pets well back. Many wassails involve cider, so arrange a lift home in advance.
Photo: @coldbeer / Pexels
