The Horoscope Of Jesus: Part 1
The Xmas season is over! We’ve wished each other a Merry Xmas AND a Happy New Year, and now the festive season is PAST. The time for singing carols and wishing peace and goodwill to all is finished. The champagne has been consumed. The New Year resolutions have all been made. The decorations are all coming down. The trees have been dismantled. The checkout chicks are no longer wearing the plush red hats as they process your groceries, and they are processing those groceries with a little less cheer. Santa is noticeably absent.
In the tradition of the church there are 12 days of Christmas, being the 12 days after Christmas, and this week we struck that 12th day, which means that we have reached Epiphany – the celebration of the coming of the wise men who follow the star to Bethlehem to find Jesus. This means that, ecclesiastically speaking, we are really at the climax of our Christmas season, despite the fact that this is not how our department stores interpret it. There everything seems to be coming down even faster than it went up.
I note that my household stands in dogmatic opposition to this trend. Our wreath is still on the door, our tree is still up, and there is still Christmas pud in the fridge! This is our way of making a stand and bringing our family properly into sync with the ecclesiastical calendar (either that or it’s just laziness).
Either way, I do find it frankly disappointing that Christmas has to die so quickly after December 25. Santa surely doesn’t have to disappear so quickly? It’s not a fixed part of the mythology, as far as I know, that as soon as Santa drops off the last present, he has to high tail it back to the North Pole, without even resting the