Ah, Janie, two Nations divided by a common language!
One aspect of this belongs here on Mudcat, and the Wikipedia article on the Wakes Weeks brings out how the heritage is actually pre-Christian and maintained significantly by the local entertainers. This was unpaid until the introduction of the Welfare State after WWII, which included paid Wakes Weeks, leading to the heyday of Blackpool (the English Coney Island) and loads of bewildered Mancunians dressed by their missus in their Sunday Best to go on holiday, as a matter of social one-upmanship. That didn't last long, with the arrival of jet package holidays in the 1960s, and the modern vacation holiday. But in the UK at least, it's within my lifetime.
Equally relevant, with a different etymology (from the French Gué/Guet, the Watch - the G becomes an aspirated H in Flemish), are the Town Waits, the trumpet units of the Watch, maintained to wake the place quickly in case of fire, a major threat in cities. Maintained at public expense until the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, they survived as Christmas Waits, whence came the Victorian Caroling tradition.
Now, there's an obvious phonetic connection between the two. If anything, the Waits were the prevalent body, and tended to cross over with the West Gallery instrumentalists, the birthplace of Sacred Harp.