A wedding feast, c.1569.

During the Elizabethan era, people looked forward to holidays because opportunities for leisure were limited, with time away from hard work being restricted to periods after church on Sundays. For the most part, leisure and festivities took place on a public church holy day. Every month had its own holiday, some of which are listed below:

• The first Monday after Twelfth Night (any time between 7th and 14th) of January was Plough Monday. It celebrated returning to work after the Christmas celebrations and the New Year.
• February 2: Candlemas. Although often still very cold, Candlemas was celebrated as the first day of spring. All Christmas decorations were burned on this day, in candlelight and torchlight processions.
• February 14: Valentine's Day. Sending gifts to one another was a Pagan tradition^{[citations needed]}, still carried on under a Christian guise. This was also a celebration based on the Roman Lupercalia.^{[citations needed]}
• Between March 3-9: Shrove Tuesday (known as Mardi Gras or Carnival on the Continent). On this day, apprentices were allowed to run amok in the city in mobs, wreaking havoc, because it supposedly cleansed the city of vices before Lent.
  The day after Shrove Tuesday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent when all were to abstain from eating and drinking certain things.
  March 24: Lady Day, or the feast of the Annunciation, the first of the Quarter Days on which rents and salaries were due and payable. The legal New Year when courts of law convened after a winter break, and it marked the supposed moment when the Angel Gabriel came to announce to the Virgin Mary that she would bear a child.
• April 1: All Fool's Day, or April Fool's Day. This was a day for tricks, jests, jokes, and a general day of the jester.
• May 1: May Day, celebrated as the first day of summer. This was one of the few Celtic festivals with no connection to Christianity, and patterned on Beltane. It featured crowning a May Queen, a Green Man and dancing around a maypole.
• June 21: Midsummer, (Christianized as the feast of St John the Baptist) and another Quarter Day.
• August 1: Lammastide, or Lammas Day. Traditionally, the first day of August, in which it was customary to bring a loaf of bread to the church.
• September 29: Michaelmas, another Quarter Day. Michaelmas celebrated the beginning of autumn, and St. Michael the Archangel.
• October 25: St. Crispin's Day. Bonfires, revels, and an elected 'King Crispin' were all featured in this celebration. Dramatized by Shakespeare's in Henry V.
  October 28: The Lord Mayor's Show, which still takes place today in London.
  October 31: Halloween. The beginning celebration of the days of the dead.
• November 1: All Saints' Day, followed by All Souls' Day.
• November 17: Accession Day or Queen's Day, the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne, celebrated with lavish court festivities featuring jousting during her lifetime and as a national holiday for dozens of years after her death.^[11]
• December 24: The Twelve Days of Christmas started at sundown and lasted until Epiphany on January 6. Christmas was the last of the Quarter Days for the year.