Examples include the Whittlesey Straw Bear, London’s Holly Man procession, the Haxey Hood and so on. Is there a comprehensive list of these events? It seems many towns have some festival involving a man enveloped in plants/straw or dressed like a horse (i.e. Padstow’s 'Obby 'Oss festival), possibly a Pagan holdover?
Not many, in my experience. Or at least, I haven’t heard of many. I’ve never heard of this Holly Man procession for instance, despite living in and near London. There’s the cheese rolling festival in Gloucestershire which gets a lot of press because it’s so stupid: they roll a huge wheel of cheese down a steep hill and then a load of people chase after it. The cheese gets up to speeds of about 70mph so it’s guaranteed to injure anyone it hits, and a lot of people get injured from falling down the hill and over each other, lots of broken bones, etc.
Then there’s obviously also bonfire night, which is universal over here. I’m sure there are a lot of other village festivals but apart from that I’ve never really heard of any of them.
Hundreds upon hundreds of British towns have, or had at one time, festivals or games on particular days of the year.
An excellent place to track them down is the 19th century Chambers’ Book of Days (online hyperlinked edition).
For instance, [the Fairlop Festival](July 4th FAIRLOP OAK FESTIVAL)
I recently caught this programme on BBC 4 that had footage for various folk dancing rituals across Britain.
I don’t know how many, but here’s an article with a bunch of crazy-sounding medieval ball games that still go on.