The Centuries-Old Good Friday Tradition You've Probably Never Heard About

TIME History Sports The Centuries-Old Good Friday Tradition Youve Probably Never Heard About Popperfoto/Getty Images Busmen from the Crawley, Sussex depot at the Tinsley Green, Surrey marbles match, April 19, 1935 This annual Good Friday event isn't exactly a religious rite

This year, on Good Friday, observers may mark the day with prayer and preparation for Easter.

But in Tinsley Green, a small town near London, a very different sort of Good Friday tradition will take place, just as it has for decades. The British and World Marbles Championship is held on that day every year and, as TIME described it in 1969, the annual event has been going for far longer than one might expect:

As legend has it, the British marbling tourney traces its heritage to the days of Elizabethan chivalry. For the hand of a maiden, two 16th century swains clashed in an all known sports tournament in which marbles, for reasons now obscure, became the dominant contest. By the 1700s the marble tournament had become an annual Good Friday ritual in Tinsley Green. The tourney began in the morning; at high noon (the hour Sussex taverns open), the referee cried Smug! and the tournament ended. The rules are wondrously simple: 49 marbles are placed in the pitch (ring) and each member of the competing teams takes his turn at trying to knock one out. Shooting is a thumbs-only propositiona flick of the wrist constitutes a fudge (foul) and disqualifies the contestant for that round. As in pool, each successful shot merits another, and the team that picks up the most marbles wins.

According to the tournaments website, the ritual fell away sometime around the year 1900 and was brought back in 1932. Though the first years of that era saw the matches as mostly local competitions, the tournament began to attract foreign teams as well. That 1969 story focused on a team from Chicago that threatened to take the title except that they never showed up.

And even if they had, TIME ventured, they were unlikely to win. After all, the defending champions had a secret weapon: marbles hand-carved from the finest porcelain commodes because only porcelain gives the tolley (shooter) the proper heft and feel.

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Source: http://time.com/3757999/good-friday-marbles-tournament/