Living Tradition in Lockdown

The Gloucestershire cheese rolling was cancelled this year, but one man rolled a single cheese down the hill. There were no groups of morris dancers out for May morning, but there were a great many solitary morris dancers up at dawn and posting videos of their dancing online.  Locally, there was no lantern parade at the December goodwill evening, but there was just the one big lantern. I have no doubt there are many other examples of people doing small, safe versions of things to keep traditions alive.

I’ve found this comforting. I am glad that traditions continue, in some form, even while we can’t get together and can’t do things in the usual ways. So when the Saturday that would have been the Stroud Wassail came by, we decided to be a one household bubble beast parade. The local wassail isn’t an ancient custom, but it’s been part of my calendar for a while, and I didn’t want it to pass uncelebrated.

We waited until late in the afternoon so there were few people out in the streets. We did a ten minute or so mini parade, with just the one beast rather than the many who normally gather.  We didn’t let people know we were doing it, and we put up photos online afterwards – and managed to cheer a fair few people with those.

Lockdown costs us so much, I think it’s really important to make what joy we can and keep going with the things we find meaningful. I also think it’s incredibly important to stay safe and not put anyone at risk. One cheese down a hill sums that up for me. One sackcloth boar dancing in the street.  The hope that in future years, it will be better and we can have our traditions back.