It was a year ago that I started writing these blogs to try and fill a communications gap caused by ‘you know what’ and also the absence of a vicar. It’s now February 2022, we have a new vicar and there may be (?) some light at the end of the Covid tunnel so I suppose that in some respects things are getting better (though I’m still rabbiting on). And baby Henry is now amongst us. Unfortunately Henry will not share a birthday month with me but national festivities for HM Jubilee will coincide to mark that occasion on the 6th (Sorry I didn’t mean to mention that).
The 2nd sees the feast of Candlemas, forty days after Christmas, the day when traditionally all vestiges of Christmas decorations were removed from church and home, though Christmas is long forgotten in many homes and certainly in shops where chocolate eggs predominate, except in displays for St Valentine’s Day (14th).
Quite what St Valentine had to do with lovers and love tokens is, as they say, “obscure” but that never got in the way of a commercial opportunity, All that we know is that St V was a priest in Rome who was imprisoned, beaten and beheaded. Tough love!! However, the date was one when people at the time believed that birds began to mate, so why not send cards (?!?).
Meanwhile in Bedford John Bunyan was publishing Pilgrim’s Progress (18th in 1678), whilst Jethro Tull (died on 21st in 1741), a church organist, was inspired by watching the organ to invent the seed drill. Who’d have guessed what goes through organists’ minds?
I don’t want to bring on any latent coulrophobia but sensitive readers should prepare for the first Sunday in February when clowns gather for a church service in Dalston in memory of the British clown Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837). “Joey”, as you will know him, is regarded as the greatest British clown and introduced the idea of the pantomime dame, the concept of the tragi-comic clown and encouraged audience participation. These traditions continue to this day but not so much in the Church of England, except in my previous church where a pantomime is always staged at Candlemas which definitely puts an end to Christmas!
Colin Dixon