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The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain
Comprehensive and engaging, this colourful study covers the whole sweep of ritual history from the earliest written records to the present day. From May Day revels and Midsummer fires, to Harvest Home and Hallowe'en, to the twelve days of Christmas, Ronald Hutton takes us on a fascinating journey through the ritual year in Britain. He challenges many common assumptions about the customs of the past, and debunks many myths surrounding festivals of the present, to illuminate the history of the calendar year we live by today.
560 pages, Paperback
First published August 22, 1996
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1983 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Hutton
50 books516 followersRonald Hutton (born 1953) is an English historian who specializes in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A professor of history at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and radio.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 3, 2007
The book is a scholarly survey of holidays in Britain, going in order from winter to spring. This may sound incredibly dull, but it's not: it's a fascinating study of customs we take for granted, exploding myths on practically every page. There are some chapters where the "exclamation-of-'holy-shit!'-to-paragraph" ratio is dangerously close to 1:1, like the chapter on Christmas.
Hutton, a professor of history at the University of Bristol in the UK who specializes in the English Civil War, has a simple method, but one that's still having to fight for traction in the world of folklore: he demands proof for assertions about history.
This may seem elementary, and in the world of history it is, but in folk studies it's practically revolutionary, although less so now than 30 years ago.
Hutton looks at the history of common holidays and customs and trashes the urban legends about pagan origins, pre-Christian survivals, and even cynical businessmen forcing us to exchange presents on December 25. Instead, he looks at the documentary evidence for everything from Christmas carols to Valentine's cards to present a fascinating picture of how we've come to celebrate holidays the way we do.
Although the histories of most holidays vary considerably, Hutton does draw some broad conclusions. First, most holiday customs are much more recent than people think, dating mostly to the 19th century rather than some fanciful pagan past; and Second, most of the fitting, pithy explanations for certain customs have no evidence to support them whatsoever.
His lengthy history of Christmas is perhaps the highlight of the book (so far, anyway; I'm only up to Shrove Tuesday). Hutton demolishes so many myths about the celebration of Christmas that there's no way I'm going to avoid feeling like a tool when putting a wreath on my door this year. One of the best parts about his take on Christmas is tracing widespread laments over the death of "a traditional Christmas"; Hutton finds evidence to show that people in England have been complaining that they don't celebrate Christmas like they used to since before the Reformation.
In fact, most of the things we take for granted as part of an "old-fashioned Christmas" - turkey, greeting cards, presents, stockings, trees, carols, Santa Claus - were all inventions of the 19th century British middle class, particularly journalists and writers like Charles Dickens (assisted by American writers like Washington Irving, and the guy who invented Santa Claus).
In some cases, these were foreign imports, like Christmas trees, while in others, they were products of the new social realities of the 19th century. Until then, it had been unheard-of outside aristocratic circles for parents to give children presents. But as the rise of the nursery and a professional child-rearing class instituted a degree of formality between children and parents, it became conceivable to add the heretofore strictly adult pastime of gift-giving to the family relationship.
If all this sounds like a tremendous slog, it isn't. Hutton demonstrates his contentions with evidence drawn from contemporary records, and manages to turn up countless rich anecdotes about the way British people have celebrated holidays over the centuries. The book is bursting with great details, like how in Northern England it was common at Christmas time to decorate tree branches with the bodies of dead wrens, or how teams of boys with blackened faces and white shirts would travel through villages, performing a "plough dance" for money during February.
Hutton, a professor of history at the University of Bristol in the UK who specializes in the English Civil War, has a simple method, but one that's still having to fight for traction in the world of folklore: he demands proof for assertions about history.
This may seem elementary, and in the world of history it is, but in folk studies it's practically revolutionary, although less so now than 30 years ago.
Hutton looks at the history of common holidays and customs and trashes the urban legends about pagan origins, pre-Christian survivals, and even cynical businessmen forcing us to exchange presents on December 25. Instead, he looks at the documentary evidence for everything from Christmas carols to Valentine's cards to present a fascinating picture of how we've come to celebrate holidays the way we do.
Although the histories of most holidays vary considerably, Hutton does draw some broad conclusions. First, most holiday customs are much more recent than people think, dating mostly to the 19th century rather than some fanciful pagan past; and Second, most of the fitting, pithy explanations for certain customs have no evidence to support them whatsoever.
His lengthy history of Christmas is perhaps the highlight of the book (so far, anyway; I'm only up to Shrove Tuesday). Hutton demolishes so many myths about the celebration of Christmas that there's no way I'm going to avoid feeling like a tool when putting a wreath on my door this year. One of the best parts about his take on Christmas is tracing widespread laments over the death of "a traditional Christmas"; Hutton finds evidence to show that people in England have been complaining that they don't celebrate Christmas like they used to since before the Reformation.
In fact, most of the things we take for granted as part of an "old-fashioned Christmas" - turkey, greeting cards, presents, stockings, trees, carols, Santa Claus - were all inventions of the 19th century British middle class, particularly journalists and writers like Charles Dickens (assisted by American writers like Washington Irving, and the guy who invented Santa Claus).
In some cases, these were foreign imports, like Christmas trees, while in others, they were products of the new social realities of the 19th century. Until then, it had been unheard-of outside aristocratic circles for parents to give children presents. But as the rise of the nursery and a professional child-rearing class instituted a degree of formality between children and parents, it became conceivable to add the heretofore strictly adult pastime of gift-giving to the family relationship.
If all this sounds like a tremendous slog, it isn't. Hutton demonstrates his contentions with evidence drawn from contemporary records, and manages to turn up countless rich anecdotes about the way British people have celebrated holidays over the centuries. The book is bursting with great details, like how in Northern England it was common at Christmas time to decorate tree branches with the bodies of dead wrens, or how teams of boys with blackened faces and white shirts would travel through villages, performing a "plough dance" for money during February.
July 19, 2017
Even today, the idea that many folk traditions and festivals are the remnants of some pagan pre-Christian Celtic religion, transmogrified and surviving furtively in the countryside, has a peculiar potency. What few people realise is how recent a notion that is and how much it relies on a particular handful of archaeologists, folklorists and historians writing at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, influenced by the growing 'cult of the countryside' that began in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and grew apace as more and more of the population abandoned said countryside for urban life.
Perhaps the most influential of these was Sir James Frazer in his massively important magnum opus The Golden Bough, in which he argued for the existence of the aforementioned pan-European Celtic nature religion, using as evidence many of the surviving folk customs of the British Isles. Frazer's approach was to attempt to reconstruct this religion from these remnants, but of course this entire approach rests on the fundamentally flawed basis that these customs and festivals were in fact of ancient origin, evolved through the years beyond recognition and now performed by a rural population utterly unaware of their original meaning or significance.
In this book, called a history of the ritual year in Britain, Ronald Hutton sets out to investigate these assumptions, managing along the way to fairly successfully disprove any form of ancient origin for the vast majority of seasonal British festivals and celebrations. He begins with the Twelve Days of Christmas, with New Year's gifts, Mummers' Dances, Hobby Horses and Lords of Misrule, and moves through the year, taking in Valentine's Day, Shrovetide, Easter, Beltane, May Day, Midsummer and onwards through harvest festivals and Halloween. What becomes obvious is how many of these seasonal celebrations actually had their origins in Christian church services and blessings, many aspects of which were deemed heretical in the wake of the Reformation and were moved outside of the church and mutated into customs centred on the community and the family instead of the traditional parish.
What does become obvious by the close is, as Hutton argues, "that the rhythms of the British year are timeless, and impose certain perpetual patterns upon calendar customs: a yearning for light, greenery, warmth, and joy in midwinter, a propensity to celebrate the spring with symbols of rebirth, an impulse to make merry in the sunlight and open air during the summer, and a tendency for thoughts to turn towards death and the uncanny at the onset of winter." But that does not mean that the expressions of those impulses are timeless or that they have come down to us through the years in some unbroken link to a mythical pre-Christian unified pagan religion.
Perhaps the most influential of these was Sir James Frazer in his massively important magnum opus The Golden Bough, in which he argued for the existence of the aforementioned pan-European Celtic nature religion, using as evidence many of the surviving folk customs of the British Isles. Frazer's approach was to attempt to reconstruct this religion from these remnants, but of course this entire approach rests on the fundamentally flawed basis that these customs and festivals were in fact of ancient origin, evolved through the years beyond recognition and now performed by a rural population utterly unaware of their original meaning or significance.
In this book, called a history of the ritual year in Britain, Ronald Hutton sets out to investigate these assumptions, managing along the way to fairly successfully disprove any form of ancient origin for the vast majority of seasonal British festivals and celebrations. He begins with the Twelve Days of Christmas, with New Year's gifts, Mummers' Dances, Hobby Horses and Lords of Misrule, and moves through the year, taking in Valentine's Day, Shrovetide, Easter, Beltane, May Day, Midsummer and onwards through harvest festivals and Halloween. What becomes obvious is how many of these seasonal celebrations actually had their origins in Christian church services and blessings, many aspects of which were deemed heretical in the wake of the Reformation and were moved outside of the church and mutated into customs centred on the community and the family instead of the traditional parish.
What does become obvious by the close is, as Hutton argues, "that the rhythms of the British year are timeless, and impose certain perpetual patterns upon calendar customs: a yearning for light, greenery, warmth, and joy in midwinter, a propensity to celebrate the spring with symbols of rebirth, an impulse to make merry in the sunlight and open air during the summer, and a tendency for thoughts to turn towards death and the uncanny at the onset of winter." But that does not mean that the expressions of those impulses are timeless or that they have come down to us through the years in some unbroken link to a mythical pre-Christian unified pagan religion.
March 18, 2015
I really love this book. I bought it in the hopes that it would cover pagan and pre-Christian religious rituals, but was sadly disappointed. However, what I found instead was a well-written, excellently researched treasure trove of information about the social festivals of Britain (mainly England, but there are some Scottish and Welsh celebrations too) dating from around the thirteenth century right into the twentieth.
Largely using parish records, Hutton does an excellent job of dating and locating the many feasts and festivals that used to fill up the British year. Starting with Christmas, the first eleven chapters alone deal with the many ways in which people celebrated over Christmas Week and into early January, from there the rest of the book moves through the year, taking a chapter for each major festival or manner of celebration, through Easter and May Day, on to Midsummer and the harvest, passing through Samhain to end with Bonfire Night in November, but stopping off along the way to explore lesser defined traditions such as mummer’s plays, hobby-horses, morris dancing and revels.
At times it can become a bit dry with the straightforward recounting of which festivities were held in which parishes and when and where, but for the most part it’s an enjoyable book. For those looking for pre-Christian rituals Hutton tries never to speculate without evidence, but he makes a good case for Beltane in particular, while casting doubt over the many “fertility rites” interpretations many twentieth century folklorists became slight obsessed with regarding traditional celebrations. There’s also an exploration of several “revived” traditions and whether or not they are truly authentic – and also whether or not that really matters, when it succeeds in maintaining a sense of identity in rural communities. His description of the hobby-horse dances, particularly the surviving one in Padstow, Cornwall, is as fascinating as it is creepy.
Filled with intriguing details about ritual life throughout the Middle Ages, and providing interesting evidence about the upheaval throughout the Tudor religious reformations and the puritan Protectorship in particular, this book is full of meticulous research and informed insight. It can be read cover-to-cover, or dipped into as necessary, but it’s perfect research material for anyone interested in this historical age. It’s definitely one to keep on the shelf and return to again and again.
Largely using parish records, Hutton does an excellent job of dating and locating the many feasts and festivals that used to fill up the British year. Starting with Christmas, the first eleven chapters alone deal with the many ways in which people celebrated over Christmas Week and into early January, from there the rest of the book moves through the year, taking a chapter for each major festival or manner of celebration, through Easter and May Day, on to Midsummer and the harvest, passing through Samhain to end with Bonfire Night in November, but stopping off along the way to explore lesser defined traditions such as mummer’s plays, hobby-horses, morris dancing and revels.
At times it can become a bit dry with the straightforward recounting of which festivities were held in which parishes and when and where, but for the most part it’s an enjoyable book. For those looking for pre-Christian rituals Hutton tries never to speculate without evidence, but he makes a good case for Beltane in particular, while casting doubt over the many “fertility rites” interpretations many twentieth century folklorists became slight obsessed with regarding traditional celebrations. There’s also an exploration of several “revived” traditions and whether or not they are truly authentic – and also whether or not that really matters, when it succeeds in maintaining a sense of identity in rural communities. His description of the hobby-horse dances, particularly the surviving one in Padstow, Cornwall, is as fascinating as it is creepy.
Filled with intriguing details about ritual life throughout the Middle Ages, and providing interesting evidence about the upheaval throughout the Tudor religious reformations and the puritan Protectorship in particular, this book is full of meticulous research and informed insight. It can be read cover-to-cover, or dipped into as necessary, but it’s perfect research material for anyone interested in this historical age. It’s definitely one to keep on the shelf and return to again and again.
July 28, 2011
Marvellous. A proper historical study of the age-old folk traditions of Britain, most of which aren't actually all that old after all. Useful ammunition for shutting up hippies and neo pagans who want to try and fool you into thinking that morris dancing goes all the way back to the stone age, or some other claptrap like what hippies and pagans tend to drone on about. And if they still mither on make them read his book on wicca too.
September 3, 2016
Dim and ill-remembered shades of blood-soaked pagan fertility rites suppressed by the Church, sanitised and repackaged for a Christian age; attenuated echoes of a timeless, agrarian traditionalism surviving into the urban and rapidly industrialising present. This was the vision of the folk customs and festivals of the British Isles as refracted through the prism of late Victorian and early twentieth-century folklore and anthropology, disseminated and popularised by writers such as J.G. Frazer and Margaret Murray. It reached its popular apogee in the 1960s and 1970s, finding its ultimate cinematic expression in ‘The Wicker Man’, a film which, rather appropriately, held that Lord Summerisle’s Victorian grandfather – an educated, enlightened, yet somewhat cynical man – had reinstituted a reconstructed ‘lost’ paganism amongst the islanders as a matter of expediency in encouraging them to grow cultivars of crops otherwise unsuited to the Scottish island. He seems a character who would have been very much at home with the theories propounded by Frazer and Murray, but enough of this digression into pagan romanticism and cinematic trivia.
Professor Hutton’s investigation into the traditions of the ritual year in Britain is carried out with commendable objectivity. Claims of survivals from the pagan past are placed under rigorous scrutiny, and in almost every instance are found wanting, with the very notion of the ‘Celtic’ year and its structure being called into question. What emerges instead is not some dim survival of a lost paganism, but of the lost world of pre-Reformation Britain; it is mediaeval Catholicism, rather than paganism, that would appear to give form to much of our ritual year and its associated customs, although not to all of them. Furthermore, the evidence that he unearths suggests that a number of folk customs that were once taken to be traditions drawn from a timeless agrarian society prove to be nothing of the sort, with many – such as some aspects of mumming – being of a much more recent provenance. Some practices, it would seem, were spontaneous creations of popular culture in a largely pre-literate age, in which a socially licensed breaking of social norms was accepted on the part of the younger members of the community. Halloween and ‘Mischief Night’ are the two notable contemporary manifestations of this tradition of youthful social transgression.
The most detailed studies into the history of Morris dancing suggest that its first appearance was not in some Arcadian English setting, but in fifteenth-century London. This entertainment was popular at the early Tudor court, but by the mid-1520s Henry VIII had already grown tired of the dance, and had it dropped from his Christmas courtly revels. From London and high society, it disseminated outwards geographically, and downwards socially, so that by the early seventeenth century it had spread to many regions of England as a popular pastime. It is not the survival of a prehistoric pagan fertility dance.
Hutton’s book thus reveals as much about the preoccupations of late-Victorian and early twentieth-century British society – an obsession with sex, fertility and paganism born, perhaps, of the disintegration of traditional Christian norms of sexual repression thanks to the challenges of Darwinism and the findings of anthropology in colonial cultures – as it does about the origins of our ritual year and its associated customs. Any reader interested in these themes will take much from this book, although dogmatic neopagans may not warm to it greatly.
The only minor gripe that I have with the publication is that its font size is rather small.
Professor Hutton’s investigation into the traditions of the ritual year in Britain is carried out with commendable objectivity. Claims of survivals from the pagan past are placed under rigorous scrutiny, and in almost every instance are found wanting, with the very notion of the ‘Celtic’ year and its structure being called into question. What emerges instead is not some dim survival of a lost paganism, but of the lost world of pre-Reformation Britain; it is mediaeval Catholicism, rather than paganism, that would appear to give form to much of our ritual year and its associated customs, although not to all of them. Furthermore, the evidence that he unearths suggests that a number of folk customs that were once taken to be traditions drawn from a timeless agrarian society prove to be nothing of the sort, with many – such as some aspects of mumming – being of a much more recent provenance. Some practices, it would seem, were spontaneous creations of popular culture in a largely pre-literate age, in which a socially licensed breaking of social norms was accepted on the part of the younger members of the community. Halloween and ‘Mischief Night’ are the two notable contemporary manifestations of this tradition of youthful social transgression.
The most detailed studies into the history of Morris dancing suggest that its first appearance was not in some Arcadian English setting, but in fifteenth-century London. This entertainment was popular at the early Tudor court, but by the mid-1520s Henry VIII had already grown tired of the dance, and had it dropped from his Christmas courtly revels. From London and high society, it disseminated outwards geographically, and downwards socially, so that by the early seventeenth century it had spread to many regions of England as a popular pastime. It is not the survival of a prehistoric pagan fertility dance.
Hutton’s book thus reveals as much about the preoccupations of late-Victorian and early twentieth-century British society – an obsession with sex, fertility and paganism born, perhaps, of the disintegration of traditional Christian norms of sexual repression thanks to the challenges of Darwinism and the findings of anthropology in colonial cultures – as it does about the origins of our ritual year and its associated customs. Any reader interested in these themes will take much from this book, although dogmatic neopagans may not warm to it greatly.
The only minor gripe that I have with the publication is that its font size is rather small.
December 7, 2021
…Or "Everything You Know About Ancient Pagan Traditions is Wrong.” The big takeaway that I’m getting from this book is that pretty much anything that people think is an ancient Celtic tradition, probably isn’t. Also, stripped of the religious trappings, most British folklore traditions can be classed as 1) parades, 2) amateur theatricals, 3) setting things on fire, and 4) extorting drinks from people. Comprehensive collection of British (including Wales, Scotland, and, to a lesser extent, Ireland) folklore traditions and holiday rituals, from as far back as documented (generally 17-19th Centuries, sometimes to the Middle Ages, and rarely further back than that). Ritual traditions range from the widely popular to incredibly obscure (some only practiced for a limited period in a specific tiny part of the country) and from the recent to “ancient.” The author includes their evolution through time, as well as social, religious (including the Reformation’s “War on Christmas,” especially in Scotland) and economic implications. Some of the traditions addressed are Christmas (the Nativity itself as well as the Twelve Days, mumming and masking, wassailing, greenery, Yule logs and the ashen faggot, sacred (and not so sacred) fires, soul caking, saining, ritual begging, sword dancing, Mummers’ plays, the horn dance, the hobby horse (including the Welsh Mari Lwyd), the Fest of Fools, Lords of Misrule, the hunting of the wren, gift-giving and Boxing Day, Plough Monday, St George's Day ridings Shrove Tuesday - pancakes, football and cock-throwing Lent, Easter eggs, Beltane fires, maypoles, hot cross buns, garlanding, Maying, May Games, Whitsun Ale, Summer King, Morris dancing, rush-bearing, first fruits, last sheafs, harvest home, wakes, revels, hoppings, Samhain and Halloween, Hallowtide and All Saints, Ascension Day and Restoration Day, Gunpowder Treason Day and Bonfire Night, Guy carrying and the Tar Barrel Societies. Fascinating but rather dry. 3.5 stars.
July 21, 2009
Subtitled "A History of the Ritual Year in Britain", this is a rather long and rambling yet scholarly look at popular and religious seasonal folk traditions in Great Britain. Christmas, mummers, morris dancing, Lords of Misrule, Whitsun ales, Beltane, maypoles, gathering rushes, Robin Hood, Guy Fawkes, and much, much more are examined as seen in all kinds of historical records from the late 1200's to modern times. It is an exhaustive and sometimes dry recital of weird customs (full of sentences like " 'Marching watches' of armed men, torch-bearers and musicians are also recorded during the early sixteenth century at Nottingham, Exeter, Bristol, Lioverpool, Barnstaple, and Totnes" p. 314-5), yet strangely compelling to read, much like Frazier's "Golden Bough", which Hutton thoroughly refutes.
This would be an invaluable resource for writers of historic fiction set in Great Britain.
This would be an invaluable resource for writers of historic fiction set in Great Britain.
March 8, 2017
A pretty ripping account of holidays and their customs throughout Britain's history. Hutton provides a lot of detail and he also takes the time to review many common misperceptions. I sometimes wondered that it wouldn't be more straightforward to have moved along by time period; but he also makes clear why he didn't and it's still incredibly readable as it is. To the point, Hutton is a lively writer and makes interesting even what might be otherwise dull. I had initially hoped to read another of his books but (if anyone is bothered to notice from my shelves, which I doubt) my local library does not always have the best selection. This was the only book of his that I could find in their catalogue. At least I was not disappointed and now know it certainly wouldn't be a waste of money to buy one of Hutton's books.
July 22, 2016
A great book from an authority in his field, which explores the traditional rites and customs of the British year. Although Professor Hutton is a controversial figure in neo-pagan circles, and clearly possesses a passionate fascination for the history of paganism and Wicca, he doesn't let this cloud his objective judgement. He takes issue with the long held view that many of these traditions have deep roots in pre-Christian paganism and highlights the lack of evidence for such a position, for example, with respect to Easter and its supposed association with the goddess Eostre, of whom there seems to be no mention in the historical record, other than a passing mention by Bede.
April 19, 2022
I cannot say enough good things about Ron Hutton, who wears a cravat and has been seen promenading with a brocade umbrella, or this book. Such astonishingly thorough, grounded, and valuable research. Essential reading for anyone who truly wants to understand the ritual seasonal year of our ancestors, debunking many myths but truly bringing their connection to the seasons alive.
Ron Hutton is an engaging and amusing writer and this book in particular is full of gems and wonder. Highly recommended!
Ron Hutton is an engaging and amusing writer and this book in particular is full of gems and wonder. Highly recommended!
Want to read
January 20, 2011This man makes me squee spastically. How I would love to pick his brain over drinks one day! I've barely cracked the book, and know it will take me delightful ages to get through, but he's so thorough and he backs everything up with proper documentation! Oh I so wish that other authors in the vein of religious (Wicca, pagan, especially) would learn the value of honest research and FOOTNOTES!!!
March 8, 2023
This is a meticulously researched scholarly work about festivals, holidays, folklore, calendar customs, social life and popular culture throughout the history of the British Isles, refuting the theories of Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough and identifying problems needing further research. It is undoubtedly not everyone's cup of tea, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
March 5, 2022
Splendid.
Read
September 24, 2015This covers the mediaeval-Early Modern ritual year in Britain, breaking down each celebration into its historical parts. If you want to know the origins of Easter, Candlmas, Rogationtide and suchlike, this is the book for you.
Want to read
August 12, 2007Recommended for those who hate conventional wisdom. That's a good enough rec for me. .
May 30, 2009
Dry, but fascinating.
September 7, 2013
Marvellous. Huge, mind. But marvellous.
October 15, 2013
The most reference-heavy and therefore the most useful of Hutton's books, at least to me. Very helpful insights into the nature of folklore and the speed with which it changes.
February 4, 2023
An extraordinary achievement and key resource. I constantly refer to it.
Read
July 24, 2022Thorough, abounding in detail, and full of scholarly acumen. Hutton takes a usefully cautious approach that is only occasionaly too skeptical. Much material here to delight the interested reader.
March 14, 2018
This was very interesting, and extremely dense. It's definitely an academic book rather than a popularization. I was a little disappointed because I was expecting more about the pagan/Celtic traditions in Britain, rather than the history from the late Middle Ages through modern times. Still, it was incredibly interesting and detailed. The writing is a little dry at times.
December 11, 2025
A dense, academic read, but an incomparable study on the history of the British ritual year!
Whether your interest is in general or religious history, 'Celtic' festivals and celebrations, or the origins of the modern neopagan wheel of the year, I cannot recommend this book highly enough - although some may be disappointed to see fact separated from beloved fiction.
Whether your interest is in general or religious history, 'Celtic' festivals and celebrations, or the origins of the modern neopagan wheel of the year, I cannot recommend this book highly enough - although some may be disappointed to see fact separated from beloved fiction.
April 30, 2018
A great, really fascinating book with all kinds of neat details. It's not super academic, but it's also not quite a "popular" book. It really had way more detail than I needed and so took me forever to finish. Really interesting all the same.
June 27, 2021
Interesting, but challenging read. Much what I thought I knew on the subject is attractive tales of ancient pagan customs morphing into folk customs, but, it seems, ultimately false and based on poor research.
January 19, 2017
It took me a while to read this as it is so packed with information, but it is a fascinating look at the ritual customs of the British Isles.
May 4, 2019
The author has been incredibly thorough. As a result, the book provides extremely detailed information about rites and customs. A bit too elaborate for me, but still admirable. An interesting read.
Read
October 1, 2025It may be that this book and perhaps its predecessor constitute the least contentious and therefore most valuable of Hutton’s contributions.
December 23, 2009
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2044561.html[return][return]A brilliant book which has been on my reading list for far too long. Hutton looks thoroughly and critically at the records of ritual celebrations in England, Scotland and Wales over the centuries, and comes out with some very revisionist conclusions. I had always assumed, for instance, that the Bonfire Night celebrations of 5 November were direct descendants of ancient Celtic Samhain ritual, shifted by a few days; Hutton shows that in fact the evidence is that Bonfire Night started as a direct commemoration of the events of 1605, that earlier Samhain celebrations are recorded, if at all, elsewhere in the country, and that if there was any calendrical shift it was in the other direction, from the 17 November anniversary celebrations of Elizabeth I's accession.[return][return]Popular ritual seems to have always been in a state of flux and development, with even Morris dancing as a popular phenomenon dating back only to the 1560s. The only celebrations that Hutton ends up crediting with genuinely ancient roots are the solstices; fully the first quarter of the book looks at the changing nature of Christmas, and summer solstice bonfires do seem to go back to Celtic times. Not surprisingly, the Reformation and the flip-flopping of the 1550s seems to have had a very disruptive effect on ancient ceremonies, but that then opened up space for new practices to emerge, Bonfire Night being only the most widespread and visible.[return][return]The book is structured in terms of the calendar, allowing Hutton to take individual ceremonies one by one and look both at the records and the historiography. He is very critical of the folklorists of a hundred years ago as historians, including especially Cecil Sharp (who I knew of because of his Clare College connection) and basically anyone who bought the idea that all the rural celebrations were survivals of an otherwise lost pre-Christian past. In his conclusion, however, he finds space to praise them as inventors of a new literary movement which culminated in the development of Wicca. This leaves me with a couple of thoughts: one stat if Wicca works for some people, then it undeniably has its own truth; the other is that this is all happening at exactly the same time as Tolkien is creating his own mythology, as a consciously fictional (rather than wishfully historical) construction to fit more or less the same needs.[return][return]Anyway, Christmas is quite a good time to read this book, especially if you have encountered any recent nonsense about traditional Christian Christmas trees.
October 23, 2014
I read some parts of this carefully, skimming some and skipping parts. It's very well done and fascinating stuff. The scholarship seems impeccable to me. (I'm not a scholar per se, but on the other hand I do work in academia; I value careful scholarship, and this seems like the genuine article.) A required reference for anyone interested in the ancient origins of certain holidays and customs. You'll learn what is known and what is unknown, according to the current research, and the author also delineates what might be learned in future and what will likely remain forever shrouded in speculation.
One of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it calls into question much that we take for granted — "what we know that ain't so," as Will Rogers would have it. The notion that many modern holiday traditions stem from ancient pre-Christian observances is quite popular. Hutton shows convincingly that some do, some don't, and some are in that ambiguous unknown zone.
However, if you do purchase a copy, I'd check the type size if possible. The paperback edition I looked was reproduced in exceedingly small type, with the block quotations almost impossible to read without significant eyestrain. This is a long book, so if you plan to read it cover to cover I'd take this consideration seriously.
One of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it calls into question much that we take for granted — "what we know that ain't so," as Will Rogers would have it. The notion that many modern holiday traditions stem from ancient pre-Christian observances is quite popular. Hutton shows convincingly that some do, some don't, and some are in that ambiguous unknown zone.
However, if you do purchase a copy, I'd check the type size if possible. The paperback edition I looked was reproduced in exceedingly small type, with the block quotations almost impossible to read without significant eyestrain. This is a long book, so if you plan to read it cover to cover I'd take this consideration seriously.
January 22, 2012
This is such a dense text that I still haven't made my way through it after several months, not for lack of trying. The information is interesting, but the book has no "pull" to it beyond the facts themselves; I feel like a Bill Bryson could have taken the same information and made it engaging and readable. Instead this is the literary equivalent of baklava: sweet, heavy, and you can't finish your whole slice. (Mind you, I'm sure plenty of people LOVE baklava and force down every last bite, which is probably true of this book also.)
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