The great Joan Collins, this paper’s occasional diarist, was quick off the mark in putting up her Christmas decorations… around November, I recall. But the really sane and sensible thing to do is to go retro and be late taking them down. Today is, I need hardly say, the Twelfth Day of Christmas when the three wise men turned up at Bethlehem with their gold frankincense and myrrh. Happy Epiphany.
But in happier days, viz, before Christmas was commercialised last century, and in even happier times before the Reformation, the season didn’t turn out like a light. It went into a kind of slow-burn right down to Candlemas on 2 February, forty days after Christmas — viz, the feast of the Purification of the Virgin. Michael Carter of English Heritage is, sound man, now banging the drum for the old concept of the Long Christmas. So, the greenery stays up until the 2 February — you can get some fresh holly and ivy in now — and English Heritage properties don’t resemble M&S on New Year’s Day, with the gold and sparkle all of a sudden replaced by grim athleisure-wear and vegan alternatives to the things you actually want to eat.
No sane human can look at the January weather and think it’s the ideal time to give up meat and drink
Even if you’re not a stickler for the church calendar, this makes psychological sense.
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