celebration cakes mark special occasions, from birthdays to religious holidays to family and civic gatherings. In the late summer of 1598, a German lawyer touring the English countryside passed a wooden cart piled high with a flower-strewn load of wheat, in which a group of people shouted as they waved a “richly dressed” effigy. This tourist was glimpsing the celebration of an ongoing harvest festival, one of many communitarian festivities staged in early modern England under the auspices of local manors or Anglican churches. Variously celebrating agricultural events (sheep washing or shearing), saints’ days and religious holidays, and ancient calendar days like May Day and Midsummer, these festivals featured music, dancing, games, mumming, and Maypole frolicking, as well as plenty of drink and special foods, including, if the hosts were generous, a great cake baked in the capacious oven of the manor house or rectory. The private celebrations of the privileged, too, were highlighted by great cakes—manorial court day, commencement day at Oxford and Cambridge, Christmas and Twelfth Night, funerals, and, above all, weddings. See christmas; funerals; twelfth night cake; and wedding.
