Every year on Old Christmas Day, January 6, a strange game is played in Haxey, Lincolnshire. A Fool, dressed in red rags with a faced smeared with soot and ochre, opens the proceedings by welcoming all present and declaring that the order of the day is
Hoose agin hoose, town agin town, /And if you meet a man knock him down, /But don’t hurt him.
While he is pronouncing this speech he is being ritually fumigated by a bonfire (see below). He then leads his team of red-clad Boggans and their King Boggan, or Lord of the Hood, to a nearby field where the next several hours the men of the parish will contest for the possession of a a series of “hoods” or rolls of canvas, rope and leather. Visits to local pubs are part of the struggle. The game is said to have links to pre-Christian ritual combats performed as a fertility rite.
