So we open the final ‘window’ in our social history book advent calendar. Given that this time of year is stuffed full of ritual and tradition, it seemed fitting to save Ronald Hutton’s The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the ritual year 1400-1700 for today. Professor Hutton looks at a range of customs and traditions, both religious and secular in origin. Highdays and Holydays (sic) marked the seasons for our ancestors, providing injections of excitement into routine lives. Some of these were national rituals, others more localised and Hutton has sought out references in contemporary documents that shed light on what was going on in particular towns. There is an appendix listing the churchwardens’ accounts that Hutton used in his research; the coverage is prodigious. In the pages of this book we find out about Maypoles and mummers, Candlemas and church ales and everything else in between. Hutton admits that, at times, the evidence is fragmentary but he has produced a comprehensive account of the celebrations of the early modern period. The time span covered by this book saw more than one major event that served to dislocate our ideas of celebration. The tumult of both the Reformation and the Civil War meant that our rituals in 1700 were very different from those of 1400.
As I come to the end of this year’s ‘calendar’, I would like to encourage you to review books that you read. It is the season of giving and it is the greatest gift you can give an author, well apart from buying their books in the first place. Obviously it is lovely if they are 4 or 5 star reviews but they do need to be genuine reactions. I personally don’t review at all unless I can award a ‘good’ rating. Reviews do not have to be lengthy. If you feel you can write something more than ‘great book’, it is helpful but all the authors I know would be grateful for two word reviews. I know I don’t write enough reviews and I really should. There’s a New Year’s Resolution in there somewhere! Can you commit to writing one a week, one a month or one for every book you finish in 2018? Use whatever medium suits you, Amazon, Goodreads, Twitter or a blog but make an author happy.
It just leaves me to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a new year in which we celebrate friendship and are tolerant of difference.