Where have all the traditions gone?

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday. I mentioned this in work and people suddenly remembered it was ‘pancake day’. Agnieszka told her colleague, who said she’d make some but ‘not from scratch, just out of a packet’. When she came home, Agnieszka told me how surprised she was and how sad it is that, in England, we don’t seem to celebrate feasts and notable dates – except the commercial orgy that is Christmas of course.
Is it because we are a more secular country? When I was little we always seemed to be at Mass, each and every feast day in church, every Wednesday during Lent for benediction. A Catholic thing perhaps? Easter, once a major time of celebration – and marked throughout mainland Europe with festivities – now passes by with a mountain of chocolate, a few pints on Easter Sunday and a frantic scramble to get to the beach before everybody else (whatever the weather) on Bank Holiday Monday.
Recently we watched Victorian Farm on the BBC iPlayer, following three people who, for a year, experienced what it was like to live on a farm in the late nineteenth century. I found it fascinating, not just for the inventiveness of Victorians, but for the marriage of traditional and modern, the mix of old and new. They celebrated all the traditional festivals, starting the year in September (Michaelmas) and then going through Christmas, May 1 (Spring) and Lammas (Summer) before ending at harvest time and the end of the farming year. At each one they stressed the importance and the symbolism of the feast. Today, people worship at the altar of Ikea, or the church of Tesco and ‘don’t have time’ for things like this. Sad, isn’t it?
Last weekend we went to a ploughing match at a farm in King’s Moss. Despite the poster’s proclamation of ‘a century of ploughing’ and a promise of ‘gentle giants’ we were disappointed to see no horses. Just lots of old(er) men on their renovated tractors. One guy, from Rhyl, said he’d been recovering from cancer and restored his little red Fergie (the red 'frog' one at the top of this post) from a chair. ‘It was either that or go under,’ he said matter-of-factly.
The newly-turned earth reminded me of Ploughman by Patrick Kavanagh.

I turn the lea-green down
Gaily now,
And paint the meadow brown
With my plough.

I dream with silvery gull
And brazen crow.
A thing that is beautiful
I may know.

Tranquillity walks with me
And no care.
O, the quiet ecstasy
Like a prayer.

I find a star-lovely art
In a dark sod.
Joy that is timeless!
O heart that knows God!

On the windowsill in our back bedroom, tomatoes, calabrese, coleus and mesembryanthemums are all showing above the soil. We’re rapidly running out of room, but the onset of growth heralds the start of Spring and the knowledge that days are getting longer and work outside will begin in earnest.