As it is often noted, Christmas seems to begin earlier and earlier every year: certain newspapers can be almost guaranteed to have a letter sometime in the autumn expressing incredulity at the Christmas display the writer has seen on the local high street. One consequence of this is that as soon as we get past Boxing Day – St Stephen’s Day, that is – everyone is heartily sick of the whole thing, while for Christians the Christmas period has only just begun.
Here at Holy Cross, Leicester, we resist this firmly. The Magi have made their way across the sanctuary to the crib in the north transept, and that crib will remain in situ until the Feast of the Presentation. It is with this cel-ebration, otherwise known as Candlemas, that February begins (nearly), and we might think of it as the last hurrah of Christmas. At the same time, Lent is only around the corner, and there is a little shadow of Lenten dark-ness even on this feast of light, when the prophet Simeon tells Jesus’s mother that he is “destined to be a sign that is rejected – and a sword will pierce your own soul too”. It is a foreshadowing of the sorrows of Our Lady at the foot of the Cross.
