It might seem strange to be writing about Christmas in the January issue. Surely by now we’ve all taken down our trees and are glad to see the back of  all those gaudy decorations? Actually,  it’s appropriate to write about Christmas now because most of Christmas is in  January: the first seven days, of course, are in December, but the last day of Christmastide is not until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which in 2022 is on 9 January. Certainly the celebration of Christmas  does not last as long as that of Easter, which goes on for weeks, right up to Pentecost, but after all, the Incarnation is a fairly important part of Christianity, and it certainly requires a substantial period of reflection such as the Church offers us in these two-and-a-bit weeks.