The Christian year moves on and we have already started looking beyond Christmas towards another date in the calendar, when Mary and Joseph presented their first son Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem.  This was a major time for any new family, since it harked back in Hebrew Bible history, to the point where God had told them to give their firstborn to him at the Temple.  This literally meant handing over your child into the service of God, leaving them with the priests.  They were given a way out of this, in that you could make a sacrifice to God at the Temple and take your child home again after doing so.

That celebration is just a few weeks away, as we have only just passed Epiphany.  That was on 6th January and is the traditional date for the visit of the Wise Men to see Jesus.  The word Epiphany comes from Greek and means 'the appearance'.  It is important to Christians because the Wise Men, coming from a long way away, are believed to be the first non-Jews to visit and worship Jesus.  So they are a symbol of Jesus revealing himself to everyone, non-Jews (Gentiles) as well as Jews.

Because of the way the Bible was written, quite a lot of Jesus's early life is crammed into the first few pages of the gospels, so some events seem to come very quickly on one another, even though several of them were in fact years apart.  They give us plenty to think about, so although the Bank Holidays have stopped in England for a few months, Christians can continue to celebrate these events before we turn to the build-up towards Easter and beyond.

This lack of the 'holiday spirit' in England during the first two to three months of each year contrasts totally with countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, where feasts and fairs can almost take over towns; adults and children spend weeks preparing for and enjoying these spectacles.  It can be quite a surprise for a person from the UK to turn up for work in a factory there only to find that many of the staff, at all levels, have booked either days or a week off so that they can participate in the fun.

Perhaps if we can look at the Christian dates and festivals that are scheduled from January to March, we can start to lift our spirits as they do in Europe!