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Whatever might have been the primary meaning, or origin of any 

 particular custom, whether rehgious or otherwise, its annual observance 

 always in time became supplemented by sports and rejoicings, frequently 

 by athletic games, and in very many cases, these festivities were kept up 

 and celebrated for hundreds of years after the first meaning and intention 

 of the observance were altogether lost and forgotten. As a familiar 

 example of this, we may take the Rushbearings, once so common in the 

 north. Two or three hundred years ago, the country churches, and 

 places of worship, in the Lake District, were many of them little better 

 than barns. They were open to the roof, with benches of the rudest 

 description for seats, the floors being neither flagged nor boarded, but 

 simply the bare earth, covered thickly over with rushes. On a particular 

 day in each year, usually in autumn, the parishioners assembled, to take 

 the old rushes out and carry new ones in ; and this being completed, a 

 special service was held, the intention of which was, to bless, or consecrate 

 the rushes, which had just been spread over the floor. In time, this 

 became a festival, friends were invited from a distance, sports on the 

 green were got up, and the day ended with drinking and dancing at the 

 village inn. Now, it is probably more than a hundred and fifty years 

 since any church floors have been strewed with rushes, and yet there are 

 several places, such as Grasmere, Ambleside, Warcop, and others, where 

 the festival has been observed annually, almost down to the present 

 time. At some of them it is kept up still. The present practice at these 

 gatherings is, for the children to walk in procession round the village, 

 bearing garlands and other floral devices, which they afterwards deposit in 

 the church, where a service is then held, and although it may seem a 

 curious mixing up of things sacred and profane, the day ends as of old, 

 with athletic sports and a dance at the public-house. 



Of all the seasons of the year, which were marked by our ancestors 

 with particular observances, Christmas was perhaps the most noted. 

 Religious both in origin and name, as it was, and although, after the 

 lapse of many centuries, it retains all its sacred character and associations, 

 there is no season of the year around which so many purely secular 

 customs and festivities have clustered, and in no part of the island were 



