Christmastide Greetings / New website debuts Jan 1 (God willing)
Dear Friends and Supporters:
Apology
My apologies for being late in posting these greetings and best wishes for this blessed season celebrating the birth of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. My two December trips ended up being far more complicated than I had originally anticipated, and wreaked havoc with my schedule as a result.
Please keep in mind that Christmas is not a single day, but rather a liturgical season -- in fact an entire "matching set" of mini-seasons of increasing scope, like a series of nested boxes, or a matching set of luggage with smaller suitcases fitting inside progressively larger ones.
The smallest, innermost "box" is of course December 25, the Feast of Our Lord's Nativity. But December 25 also inaugurates an entire eight-day octave -- the next largest box -- that culminates in January 1 (the Octave Day of the Nativity, also known as the Feast of Our Lord's Circumcision -- a holy day of obligation).
In the next larger "box," there are the "Twelve Days of Christmas," well-known from the carol by that name, spanning from December 25 through January 6, the Feast of Epiphany. There is a yet larger box after that, liturgically encompassing the days up through January 12. Finally, in the largest, outermost "box," Christmastide is an entire 40-day season (like Lent in regard to length) that only concludes on February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Candlemas Day).
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