Anniversaries of great political events are popular public holidays

Posted in Customs, Historical articles, History, Leisure, London, Royalty on Wednesday, 18 December 2013

Click on any image for details about licensing for commercial or personal use.

This edited article about festive holidays first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 497 published on 24 July 1971.

The Restoration, picture, image, illustration

The Restoration of Charles II was greeted by joyful crowds in the streets of London by Richard Hook

Everyone, every so often, enjoys what we call “kicking over the traces.” It’s a thing which harnessed horses do when they get over-excited and feel a bit wild. It’s escape from routine. It’s freedom, and it’s fun – in moderation.

Probably the greatest nationwide “spree” ever enjoyed was the mood which followed the glum and gloomy years of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate. So-called “Merrie England” had the smile kicked off its face by the jackboots of the Puritan and Military Protectorate. “Never on Sunday” became never at all. No games, no plays, no music, no dancing, no sport of any kind. And then upon 29th May, 1660, the joy-bells rang out as King Charles the Second, returned from exile, rode into a jubilant London.

And what goings-on! The returned King, the “Merrie Monarch,” started up horse-racing on Newmarket Heath. The Palaces of Whitehall and Hampton Court were filled with a laughing, dancing new-style Court.

Britain, fiercely reacting from the five gloomy years, went boisterously gay. Assembly Rooms opened for dancing, clubs for dicing and card-playing. The theatres opened their doors to audiences ready to roar with laughter at the witty, saucy plays of the playwrights of the Restoration such as Wicherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh.

Nobody could have called the reign of Charles the Second a particularly wise or prudent one. But socially he restored the spirit of fun.

In Restoration days there would have been no room, and no need, for that topsy-turvy Carnival character known as the “Lord of Misrule.” He first appeared, as we know, in the ancient Roman Festivals, and for centuries afterwards literally lorded it over occasions when Church and Establishment took a back seat and tolerantly watched the populace go crazy.

The New Year “Feast of Fools” – very strong in France – was a colossal “send-up” of religion in general, and the Church in particular. Clergy were hustled from their stalls by masked buffoons, and the “Lord of Misrule,” impersonating a Bishop, would bawl forth irreverent sermons.

There was of course, a great deal of Morris Dancing. The origins of the “Morris” are a shade obscure, but some fancy it to be a corruption of “Moorish,” a dance which spread from Morocco towards England through Western Spain and Portugal, flourished, and still, flourishes, in the Basque country and found its firmest footing in England. Today Morris Dance Societies grow year by year. Every year towards midsummer Morris Men from all over England meet together in the old Essex town of Thaxted. They dance day-long through the surrounding villages, and upon the Saturday night, when every pub in Thaxted stays open late, they take over the main street and dance, and dance, and dance. The Fools are there, the hobby-horses, the jingling bells, the handkerchiefs, the clashing wooden staves. It is pagan, it is joyous, it is a liberation of modern man through rituals as old as time. The beer flows, the spectators line the street, the singing breaks out. It is, in fact, one enormous spree which comes to its end, as all good sprees should, in church!

On 14th July, 1789, the poor people of Paris took that grim French prison, the Bastille, by storm. In British terms this would have amounted to the breaching and overthrow of the Tower of London. The storming of the Bastille was curtain-up to the French Revolution, a reign of terror in some ways, and in others the creation of a finally better France. “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” – “Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood” was the battle-hymn of what was to become a democratic France. “A nous la Liberte” chanted the people of Paris. And still they chant it on the greatest single day of nationwide spree anywhere in the world – excepting, possibly, Independence Day in the United States. July the Fourteenth – “Le Quatorze” – is “Bastille Day” when a whole nation, from grandfathers to grandchildren “lets its hair down.”

Not even an English Bank Holiday can compare with “Le Quatorze” – bands play, people dance in the streets, firemen fight each other with hoses and night skies are fountained with fireworks. Children do not go early to bed on Bastille Day – the whole family goes “out on the town” until it is ready to drop.

Huge national sprees like Bastille Day (14th July) and American Independence Day (4th July) are associated with earthly joys, such as freedom and change of government. How, then, about other jolly occasions? Invariably they are concerned with the Church in particular and with religion in general.

We in the British Isles have four days on which to remember with rejoicing our patron saints – St. George for England, St. Andrew for Scotland, St. David for Wales and St. Patrick for Ireland. The English do not go mad on St. George’s Day; the Scots celebrate the day of St. Andrew with far less fervour than, with bagpipes, haggis and whisky, they toast “The Immortal Memory” of the poet Robert Burns: the Welsh wear leeks to honour St. David. But the Irish – well, St. Patrick’s Day is the greatest non-stop holiday of the year.

Comments are closed.