Now Maybe We Can All Get Back To Normal

This Month and next I am republishing former posts as I contemplate a refocusing of Hints and Echoes. This one was published on January 6, 2016.

 Last night—January 5—marked the evening before Epiphany when the Biblical Kings reached the newborn Christ Child.

In medieval and Tudor England, Twelfth night marked the end of a winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve or as we know it, Halloween. Now we don’t exactly celebrate a winter festival, but that period between Halloween and tonight is generally referred to as “the holidays.”

There’s a lot to love about “the holidays” : It’s a time of parties, parades, and family get togethers and gifting and big meals on fine china— a time of spiritual renewal, of counting our blessings, of communicating with old friends, of charitable impulse.But let’s face it; in many ways it is exhausting.

They used to indulge in raucous merrymaking on Twelfth Night. Most of us don’t feel quite up to that. But  if you had a Christmas tree and haven’t already done so, now’s the time to take it down.