Shrove Tuesday fun and games

There still survive - happily - a number of customs associated with Shrove Tuesday that are part of an older ritual year in which the local community actively participated. These events are linked to the liturgical calendar yet are by no means a well conducted religious procession and prayers, but much more an opportunity for the parishioners to ‘let off stream’ before the rigours of Lent. These events were a collective - dare I say ‘Integralist’ - celebration and in that sense did, of course, celebrate community, but without the artificiality of so many modern attempts to “celebrate community” - still worse to “empower” it ….

Last year I wrote about such traditional events in The Olney Pancake Race and in The Shrove Tuesday Atherstone Ball Game, which includes other such games which are held at Ashbourne, Alnwick and Corfe. It is suggestive that these four examples which survive are scattered across the realm from north Northumberland to Purbeck in Dorset, which may well suggest such boisterous games, as with the Haxey Hood at Epiphany, were once much more common. There are similar events on the continent, pointing to a shared European folk tradition.