Boar's Head Feast - St. John's College

St. John's College

By 1607, an expansive ceremony was in use at St. John's College, Cambridge, England. There, the boar's head was accompanied by "mustard for the eating" and decorated with flags and sprigs of evergreen, bay, rosemary and holly. It was carried in state to the strains of the Boar's Head Carol.

By then the traditional Boar's Head Festival had grown to include lords, ladies, knights, historical characters, cooks, hunters, and pages. Eventually, shepherds and wise men were added to tell the story of the Nativity. The whole was embellished with additional carols, customs and accoutrements. Mince pie and plum pudding, good King Wenceslas and his pages, a yule log lit from the last year's ember ... all found a place and a symbolic meaning in the procession.

Read more about this topic:  Boar's Head Feast

Famous quotes containing the words john and/or college:

    The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.
    —Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)

    If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation’s greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)