Holidays and their Celebration
Elizabethan Holidays
Why don't we celebrate these holidays today?
The reason why we don't celebrate these holidays here today is because the Anglican Church, the official Protestant Church of England, and especially the Puritans, wanted to eliminate the Catholic holidays, and they were far more rigid in their ideas of acceptable celebration behavior than the Catholic Church had been. In 1552 Elizabeth abolished most saints' days and issued an official Anglican list of the annual holy days.
Most popular Elizabethan holidays:
May Day
The coming of summer was celebrated on May 1, also known as May Day. Even though the holiday was in honor of two saints, Philip and Jacob, by custom it was mainly celebrated as a secular holiday. The night before May Day, the young people of the village or town went out into the woods to gather mayflowers. The flowers were used to decorate houses, but some villages used those flowers to decorate a pole that young men and women danced around the next day. The mayday pole is said to have involved some kissing, and the puritans worried that the holiday encouraged immoral behavior among the English young.
Twelve Days of Christmas
Twelve Days of Christmas is one of the most popular Elizabethan holidays. It started on Christmas Eve and continued through January 6th, the Twelfth Night. The Twelve Days of Christmas consisted of music, singing Christmas carols door to door, feasts, and other festivities. The last day of the holiday, Twelfth Night also known as Epiphany, was the day of the arrival of the three Magi, or wise men, at the manger of the infant Christ.
Accession Day
On November 17, 1517, the English celebrated Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne of England. The day consisted of tilting tournaments performed in London for the queen, in which young nobles on horseback armed with lances, or long spears, charged at one another in an attempt to throw their opponent from his horse. London became the site of great parades, music, dramatic presentations and religious services dedicated to Thanksgiving. After her death, the holiday was celebrated for nearly two hundred years.