January 6th is Christmas day for the Orthodox Church but for western christians it is the feast of the Epiphany celebrating the coming of the Wise Men to worship the infant Christ and is otherwise known as Twelth Night being the 12th day of the Christmas Feast.
In the middle ages this would be the day that the fool or one of the lower servants was made Lord of Misrule and took the place of the master to direct the feast.
Nowadays most people regard it as the end of the Christmas celebrations and the day they take down their decorations and throw out the tree although one vicar has been on the radio a lot yesterday and today explaining that the church regards Christmas as a 40 day feast which ends at Candlemas on February 2nd. This is of course a cross quarter day and emphasises the link with pre-christian religion.
Shakespeare wrote one of his plays for the court festivities of 1601. It is a comedy and one of its themes is a play on the upside down world usually created by the Lord of Misrule. We saw an excellent production at Stratford in the summer by the Royal Shakespeare company and they had managed to make it completely up to date with characters speaking on mobile phones.
The commercial drive peters out now as the January Sales come to an end. In my youth these started in January with the excess stock not sold by Xmas substantially reduced to make way for new stock. All the repricing had to be done by hand so sales started in January. Now it's done by computer so some start before Xmas and most on Boxing Day and most have finished by the time the schools go back next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment