This year my A to Z challenge is about Christmas, a major festival in the Christian Church. Another major festival is Easter, which I wrote about for the A to Z Challenge in 2020.
In many countries in the northern hemisphere there has been a winter festival at the darkest season of the year. In pre-Christian Britain this was known as Yule. Christmas was introduced in December to use the midwinter festivities in a different way. The shortest day is December 21st. Christmas Day (as you probably know) is December 25th, when the birth of Jesus Christ is celebrated.
The Christmas season begins on 25th December and continues until Epiphany (6th January) or Candlemas (2nd February). Epiphany is when the visit of the wise men or magi is commemorated. Candlemas moves our thoughts to the presentation of Jesus in the temple. It would seem that the historical events happened in a different order from the Church’s calendar.
A traditional food at Christmas is a chocolate cake shaped like a log. The outside is covered with butter-cream icing textured like the bark of a tree. It may be decorated with the words, ‘Season’s greetings’ and perhaps a plastic robin (the European species, which is popular on Christmas cards). It is known as a Yule log and represents the large pieces of firewood, which would have been burned at the pre-Christian feast of Yule.
The carol for this post is the Gloucestershire Wassail, a song about drinking and making merry.
As I have mentioned in earlier A to Z challenges the name by which Jesus Christ was known during his life on earth was Yeshua. Jesus is the English form of the name. My earlier posts were Yeshua and You in 2020 and Yeshua in 2017.
While this year’s A to Z badges by Anjela Curtis honour the late Jeremy Hawkins, I hope that my posts about Christmas honour Jesus Christ, ‘who was and is and is to come’. Revelation 1:4