Like the people of all England's commercial and manufacturing centres in the late Middle Ages, the Coventrian's working year was punctuated by holidays. A holiday for the medieval townsman or woman was not a time to travel away from home, but a holy-day, time when the normal week's pattern was interrupted by feasting and celebrations in which dramatic performances were a significant element.

The majority of holidays were annual events, celebrations of the feasts in the church calendar and local saints' days, but they also included older traditional festivals, both universal like midsummer, and local, like the annual Hox Tuesday celebrations in Coventry when an ancient defeat of the Danes was re-enacted. There were also holidays which were truly occasional, particularly when the monarch chose to visit the city, which in Coventry happened relatively frequently. When it did, the easiest way to put on a show was to adapt elements of well-rehearsed annual festivals as vehicles both for paying extravagant compliments to the visitor and for showing off the wealth and sophistication of the community.