This Christmastide issue of the Catholic Herald is a reminder that, for Christians, the festive season is still festive. Secular society may regard New Year’s Day as the start of a regime of fast and abstinence – or diet and exercise – but it falls during the Twelve Days of Christmas, which means that for Catholics, the festivities reach a high point with the Epiphany and the coming of the Three Wise Men to pay homage to the Baby Jesus.
Indeed, the Christmas season doesn’t stop when the Christmas trees come down after the Epiphany. Rather, it continues right through January until the Purification of the Virgin at Candlemas on 2 February. This radical divide between the secular year and the Church calendar is one more proof that Christianity is now counter-cultural, at least in the West.
