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Ronald Hutton: The Stations of the Sun (1997, Oxford University Press, USA) 5 stars

Comprehensive and engaging, this colourful study covers the whole sweep of ritual history from the …

Excellent (and still most recent?) historical survey of British holidays.

5 stars

I read this a while back when I was trying to grok the Wiccan Sabbats (like -- Feast of Torches. My brain was just all, "Dude, how are you not just groundhog's day plus fire?") This is a very academic text, so you're warned. However that's precisely why I loved it. Hutton's methodologies are great and it was a fascinating read. This book is a bit older, and I'm sure there's new research on these topics. I don't know if Hutton plans a new edition, but I'd love for 1) an updated editon and 2) a similar text looking at which, when, and how these holidays continued to evolve after crossing the Atlantic.