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Ascension Day 2019

Thursday 30 May is Ascension Day which means tower top singing and beating the bounds in many places. The special events come forty days after Easter when, according to St Luke, Jesus ascended to heaven by disappearing in a cloud. This was the last Resurrection appearance. The best place for tower top singing is Oxford […]

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Rogation Sunday 2019

This year there are not so many special events on Rogation Sunday 26 May because, maybe, it falls unusually on the Bank Holiday weekend. The annual Beating the Bounds in Cambridge or Southwell are not taking place. But tradition will be maintained at Leighton Buzzard, Mudeford and in the Lea Valley. The Wilkes Walk to […]

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May Day

On Wednesday 1 May the calendar provides more confusion. It manages to be not only May Day but also St Philip and St James’s Day or St Joseph the Worker Day. The May Day carol The winter’s sleep was long and deep mentions ‘two saints of God’. But the universal calendar moved Philip and James […]

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St George’s Day on Monday & Tuesday!

It’s St George’s Day at last. With 23 April falling within Easter there has been confusion about the correct date.  The Church of England is observing St George’s Day today Monday 29 April. But because today is the feast day of St Catherine of Siena Day, patron of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church has designated […]

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Quasimodo Sunday

The Sunday after Easter Day has many names. It used to be generally called Low Sunday although it is uncertain why. Was it because of a low attendance or less exuberance than last week? Today is the Second Sunday of Easter but since Millennium Year many call it Divine Mercy Sunday because St Faustina Kowalska, […]

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Easter Monday: Eggs & hare pie scrambling

Easter is just starting. Even the Book Common Prayer has a collect and readings for Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday. The weather is good for egg rolling in Preston’s Avenham Park which has been an Easter custom there since 1867. Meanwhile at Hallaton in Leicestershire the annual Easter Hare Pie scrambling and bottle kicking on […]

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It’s Easter!

“None rejoice at Eastertide less than those who have not grieved in Lent”, reflected John Henry Newman who later this year will be declared to be a saint. Easter has arrived overnight after our forty days of Lent and this last week of living with Christ in Jerusalem. We now begin Easter and break the […]

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In Limbo on Holy Saturday

If we are  following the real time of Holy Week today Saturday  is a limbo with Christ dead whilst  the apostles wonder what will happen next. But today we know that come dusk there will be the first flickers from Easter fires outside churches and in public areas in Finland and villages in Cyprus. So […]

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Good Friday: Hot cross buns

On Good Friday 1783 Dr Johnson described his breakfast as “tea without milk, and…a hot cross bun to prevent faintness”.  Today is a day of fasting and abstinence so a hot cross bun, invented by St Albans Abbey in 1361, should keep one going until after church this afternoon. The distribution of hot cross buns […]

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