Haxey Hood 2012

Haxey Hood is one of the ancient mass-participation festival games and is the earliest in the year, sometimes taking place in snow. Instead of a football, the players use twelve "hoods" which are leather and sack tubes about 2 feet long; the villagers of Haxey and neighbouring Westwoodside compete to get the hood inside their pub to score. The winner's pub gets to keep the Hood until the following year. The official legend behind the game is that it all started back in the Fourteenth Century when Lady de Mowbray dropped her hood and the locals chased and caught it; she was so amused by the event that she donated land to the village on condition that the event was re-enacted each year. For more information on this and other British Calendar Customs, visit http://calendarcustoms.com/