25 February 2025
Fasting until Easter: Shrovetide & Lent
What does your preparation for Easter look like? Gathering the chocolate eggs; planning the roasts or the walks; figuring out which church service you’ll attend on Easter Sunday; plotting the…
11 February 2025
There’s No Place Like Home: Homes through History
From the thatched dwellings of the Saxons to the grandiose Edwardian townhouses, the story of homes in England is as varied as it is fascinating. Our homes are more than…
27 January 2025
The Light of a New Year: Candlemas
How long do you leave your Christmas decorations up for? Do you have people jibing about how it’s bad luck to leave them up past Twelfth Night? Scoffing at how…
15 January 2025
Drinking with the Trees: The Tradition of Wassailing
At the heart of English tradition lies wassailing, an ancient and joyful custom that marks the New Year with blessings, music, and communal cheer. Rooted in folklore and evolving through…
30 December 2024
Celebrating New Year’s: Games, Gifts, and Royal Favour
What are your plans for New Year’s? Watching the fireworks? Counting down the year with a glass of champagne in hand? New Year’s celebrations have changed dramatically over the centuries,…
20 December 2024
Feasts, Parties and Celebrations: The Twelve Days of Christmas
How do you celebrate Christmas? Most, if not all, families will have their Christmas traditions; the food they eat, the family members they see, the church services they attend, the…
9 December 2024
Winter Warming: Ritual Year Traditions in the First Season
In the Ritual Year, the year is divided into the four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. This roughly maps onto the monthly divisions too. Winter is December, January, February; Spring…
18 November 2024
Christmas Through the Ages
How do you celebrate Christmas? You might have traditions that are unique to you and your family, your cultural heritage or national identity. In Britain, Christmas as we know it…
13 November 2024
The Heart of the Home: A History of the Hearth
What does the household revolve around? What is the centrepiece of the home? For millennia, it has been the hearth. Indeed, the modern world ‘hearth’ comes from the Old English…
5 November 2024
Blod-Monath: Winter Survival & Celebration
November, the month of Guy Fawkes, bonfires and autumn leaves, went by a different moniker during the Early Medieval period. It was known, rather descriptively, as ‘Blod-Monath’, or ‘Blood Month’…
