Skip to main content
Shakespeare & Beyond

Elizabethan Holidays: Christmas, New Year's Day... and Plough Monday?

The Twelve Days of Christmas, from December 25 to January 6, was the longest and most enthusiastically celebrated festival in the Elizabethan calendar. On Christmas Eve, people decorated with evergreens, ivy, and holly, burned a Yule log, sang carols, and visited neighbors. Wassail was dispensed by groups who carried the cauldron of beer and roasted apples from door to door.

Comments

Plough Monday continued in rural England right into the 20th century and has recently been revived: https://specialcollections.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=10943

Suzanne Paul — January 4, 2016

Plough Monday continued in rural England right into the 20th century and has recently been revived: https://specialcollections.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=10943

Suzanne Paul — January 4, 2016

[…] Shakespeare’s England, gifts were often exchanged on New Year’s Day. The Folger’s collection includes six of Queen Elizabeth I’s New Year’s gift rolls. These […]

Seven Shakespeare quotes for New Year's - Shakespeare and Beyond — December 26, 2017