Boxing Day Is Lovely — but St Albans Deserves Morris All Year Round

We have no complaints about Boxing Day. Truly, none. The crowd outside the Cathedral, the steam rising off the dancers, the slightly startled tourists, the pub that runs out of mulled something by two o'clock — it's the best morning of our year, and we'd defend it against anyone.

But there's a strange thing about being a Boxing Day tradition. For roughly eleven and a half months, most people in St Albans have no idea we exist.

That's not a grumble about fame. It's an observation about what a city loses when a living tradition gets filed away as a seasonal treat, brought out with the decorations and packed off with the tree. Morris isn't a Christmas ornament. It's a warm-weather, open-air, noisy, social activity that happens to have landed on the calendar in the coldest week of the year.

So here's the argument: in 2026, St Albans should see Morris on its streets in April and July and September, not just December.

The problem with being a once-a-year spectacle

A Boxing Day crowd is a fantastic audience and a useless recruitment poster. Everyone is there for the occasion, wrapped up warm, holding a paper cup, thinking about lunch. Nobody watches a dance in the freezing cold and concludes that this is a thing they could personally do next Tuesday.

Spectacle cuts both ways. The rarer something is, the more it reads as performance rather than participation. And Morris lives or dies on participation.

What a regular Saturday stand actually does for the high street

Here's the practical bit. A Morris side arriving in a town centre does something that a marketing budget struggles to replicate: it stops people.

A side of eight to twelve dancers, bells ringing, sticks clacking, occupying a corner of the Market Place for twenty minutes, creates a genuine crowd — and a crowd on a Saturday morning on St Peter's Street is worth money to the businesses around it. People linger. They buy a coffee while they watch. They bring children who then require a pastry. They remember the shop they were standing outside when the hankies came out.

This isn't theory. Charter Market days already prove the point: footfall follows anything worth stopping for. Morris is free entertainment with a built-in sound system, and it costs a venue nothing but a bit of pavement.

And there's the local character argument. A city that has dancing in its street on an ordinary Tuesday in June feels like somewhere with a pulse. That's the sort of thing people mention when they tell you why they like living here — more than they ever mention the car parks.

The wellbeing bit nobody puts on a poster

Morris is a folk dance, but it's also a weekly appointment with a group of people who will notice if you're not there. That's rarer than it should be.

The health benefits are real enough — an hour and a half of stepping, turning and (in our case) occasional mild arguments about timing is decent exercise for anyone who has spent the day at a desk. But the part that surprises new dancers is the social side: a standing commitment, a shared repertoire, a reason to be outdoors in the middle of town doing something a bit daft with people of different ages and backgrounds.

None of that works if the only time anyone sees the group is on a bank holiday with a brass band.

You can't join something you never see

We get the same message most Januaries: 'I saw you at Christmas — how do I get involved?' It arrives when we're least able to act on it, and by February it's been forgotten by both parties.

If we'd been visible in June and September, half those conversations would already have happened. Visibility is recruiting. A dancer leaning over the barrier to say 'come along on a Thursday, no experience needed, we'll teach you' works far better in the sunshine than it does over a paper cup of mulled cider.

And yes, we'd like more dancers. Sides need new blood, new sticks, and people who'll learn the third figure of a dance that everyone else has known since 1988.

Four things that would make 2026 different

For venues and publicans. If you've got a forecourt, a beer garden or a corner of pavement, we'll come. Pubs have hosted Morris for centuries; it's one of the oldest mutually beneficial arrangements in English social life. You get a crowd, we get a pitch, everyone gets a drink afterwards.

For shops and market traders. Put a chalkboard out on a stand day. Time a promotion around a Saturday morning. A ten-second announcement over a shop sound system is more effective than you'd think.

For would-be organisers. Pair us with something that already draws people — a market day, a summer fair, a food festival, a church fête in one of the villages around the city. We're also happy to travel: Wheathampstead, Redbourn, Harpenden, London Colney and the villages beyond are all part of our patch.

For anyone who fancies a go. Turn up. That's the whole application form. If you can walk in time to music and laugh at yourself, you're qualified.

What we're asking for

Not a festival. Not funding. Just a handful of ordinary dates through the year when a side appears somewhere visible, does twenty minutes of dancing, and is treated as a normal part of the city rather than an annual curiosity.

If that happens in 2026, Boxing Day will still be the highlight. It just won't be the only day anyone remembers we're here.

We'll be out with the bells as soon as the weather allows. If you'd like us somewhere near you, get in touch through the website — and if you're a shop, a pub or a park with a bit of space, we'll happily discuss dates.