This is our special Christmas event and will include light seasonal refreshments and mulled wine. Tickets: members £2; non members £10. Booking essential. Contact: enquiries@kirtoninlindseysociety.org.uk or ring the organiser.

The Lincoln Waites perform Lincoln’s unique 600 year old tradition to welcome in Christmas.

Back in the 1480s, Christmas was an uncomfortable union of religious worship with illicit gambling and a great deal of alcohol! On St Thomas’s day (21st December) the Cries of Christmas proclaimed the start of the festive season when all men were free to do as they liked with no fear of arrest, other than by a writ from the king:-

‘Every franchised man and denizen inhabit within this City shall have free liberty and safeguard, in honest mirth and game sports, to go or do what him please. No man will be attacked or arrested by any officers of this City without a writ from the King!’ (This short extract is a modern English version. The longer original dates from 1480).

In the sixteenth century, the words of the cries were written down to preserve them, as the custom had fallen out of use even then. They were written on a flyleaf of the entries of the Common Council of Lincoln, just before the first list of Mayor’s Officers for the year 1565. It is possible that the three men delivering the cries may have been members of the City of Lincoln Waites, as there is a record of 1571 of three of the mayor’s officers being provided with new livery coats out of public funds for Crying Christmas. Waites, of course, were the mayor’s musicians. The City of Lincoln Waites you see today were re-formed in 2007 by Al Garrod, and recognised as official musicians of the mayor of Lincoln on 21st April 2009. They are proud to be keeping alive the ancient tradition of Crying Christmas.