Traditional British Customs

Haxey Hood 
Held at Haxey, Humberside (formerly Lincolnshire), on Twelfth Night (6 January, unless this falls on a Sunday, when it takes place the previous day), the participants in the ancient event are a Fool with a painted face and multicoloured rag costume, a Lord and a Chief Boggin in red coats and top hats decorated with flowers and 10 further Boggins in red jumpers, accompanying numerous players who compete for 12 sackcloth hoods, but primarily for a leather hood, the goals being two public houses.

Haxey Hood

Twelfth Night 
A number of traditional Twelfth Night (6 January) customs in Britain involved serving cakes and wine. One that survives is Baddeley Cake ceremony at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, funded by a bequest from actor Robert Baddeley (1732-94), a former cook.

Julie Andrews is helping to cut the cake at Baddeley Cake ceremony

Up Helly-Aa 
The most celebrated fire festival in Europe, the Up Helly-Aa takes place in Lerwick, Shetland, at the end of January. Traditionally, blazing tar barrels were drawn through the streets, but since 1889 a replica Viking longship is dragged along by a torchlit procession with participants dressed as characters from Norse legends, following which songs are sung and the ship is set alight.

Up Helly-Aa

Nutters Dance 
The Britannia Coco-Nut Dancers, or 'Nutters' of Bacup, Lancashire, traditionally perform on Easter Saturday. They wear white hats, black tops with sashes, striped kilts and wooden clogs and have blackened faces. They use wooden discs on their hands and knees to beat a rhythm. The custom is of unknown origin, but great antiquity.

Nutters Dance

Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking 
Held at Hallaton, Leicestershire, on Easter Monday, the custom was first recorded in the early 18th century, but is much older. It involves a scramble for a hare pie between the villagers of Hallaton and neighbouring Medbourne, followed by a free-for-all football match played by large teams across a stream, with 'bottles' — actually three small barrels, two of which contain beer — as the 'balls'.

Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking

Helston Furry Dance 
On or about 8 May, Helston, Cornwall, celebrates the arrival of spring with the Furry or Flora dance, a series of dances for different age groups, the principal one at midday performed by men in morning suits and top hats and women in floral dresses and summer hats. A relatively modern mystery play has also been incorporated into the proceedings. The 'Floral Dance' song was composed by Kate Moss (1881-1947) in 1911, a brass band version of it charting at UK No.2 in 1977.

Helston Furry Dance

Cheese Rolling 
Taking place on Spring Bank Holiday Monday at Cooper's Hill, Brockworth, Gloucestershire, the custom, which dates from the early 19th century or earlier, involves rolling a Double Gloucester cheese down the steep hill with contestants hurtling after it. Injuries are often sustained in the three men's races and one women's race, the first competitor to cross the line winning the cheese.

Cheese Rolling

Dunmow Flitch Trials 
Claimed to date back to 1104, so already an ancient custom when it was mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Flitch Trials take place in July every four years in Great Dunmow, Essex. Couples who have been married for at least a year appear before a judge and jury of six maidens and six bachelors. If they are able to prove that they are happily married, they can claim a flitch, or side of bacon, and are carried shoulder-high to the town's marketplace. One of the four winning couples in 2008 was from the USA.

Dunmow Flitch Trial

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance 
The custom takes place at Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire, on Wakes Monday, the day after the first Sunday after 4 September. The horns that give it its name — ancient reindeer antlers providing a clue as its antiquity — are housed in the church. Twelve male dancers wear medieval costume, accompanied by a man dressed as Maid Marian, a hobby horse, a Fool and a child with a bow and arrow and another with a triangle.

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance 2008 by Simon Brighton

Lewes Bonfire 
In Lewes, East Sussex, Guy Fawkes Night (5 November) has been merged with a commemoration of the burning of 17 Protestant martyrs in the town during the reign of Mary I. Six bonfire societies (Borough, Cliffe, Commercial Square, Southover, South Street and Waterloo), plus others from outlying towns and villages, parade through Lewes in fancy dress with blazing torches, lay wreaths and say prayers before going to their respective bonfire sites for spectacular firework displays at which 'clergy' are pelted with fireworks and effigies of Pope Paul V and 'enemies of bonfire' are exploded.

An anti-papist Bonfire Night celebration in Lewes (Getty Images)