Happy Plough Monday!

To most Englishmen and women living before the twentieth century came creeping in, Christmas was more of a holiday “season” than the modern one-day extravaganza, with many smaller, specialized celebrations spread out over two weeks.

One of these celebrations that has been largely forgotten is Plough Monday. Traditionally the first Monday after the Twelve Days of Christmas, Plough Monday represented the end of the holiday season in rural communities, and signaled the return to labor.

Like many holidays, this one began with religious roots. On the Sunday before Plough Monday, ploughmen would carry their ploughs into church for a blessing for the new year, a prayer for good crops, health, and prosperity. It’s similar to christening a new boat or pinning a bit of greenery to the cross-post of a newly framed house: an entirely human wish for a fresh start and good luck, a happy mixture of ancient pagan superstition and Christian ritual.

The day that followed –– Plough Monday –– was a whole different affair. This was pure pagan revelry and excess, more kin to Halloween than Christmas, and the last real holiday before the long, grim winter months. On Plough Monday, the newly-blessed plows would be festively decorated with ribbons, and the Plough-Boy or Plough-Bullock (the name varies) would carry your plough throughout the neighborhood, demanding pennies. Anyone foolish enough to ignore these demands had their yard or garden cheerfully ploughed into a muddy mess, an earlier form of t.p.’ing the house that gives bum candy to trick-or-treaters.

The collected pennies were contributed to a village-wide “frolic” later in the day. The frolic involved all kinds of foolery with the decorated ploughs as the centerpiece, from Molly-dancing to mummer’s plays to mock sword-fights to kissing games, overseen by a cross-dressing “queen” –– usually the most burly and unattractive man to be found in the village, and likely the one with the best sense of humor, too –– who was known as Bessy for the duration of his/her reign.

And, of course, there was drinking. Lots and lots and LOTS of drinking.

For more about traditional Plough Mondays, check out this entry from Chamber’s Book of Days. Published in 1879, it already has a little of the golden haze of the quaint past, but you’ll still get the idea. The early 19th century engravings illustrating this blog capture the spirit, too.

Personally, I think Plough Monday is a holiday worth reviving. Imagine all of us writers hauling our computers off to be blessed (probably not a bad idea) for the new year, and then dragging them from door to door as we asked for pennies for a big ol’ celebration of double-mocha-lattés at the nearest Starbuck’s. Surely writers crave our caffeine as much as any ploughmen did their John Barleycorn.

And Happy Plow Monday to you all!