The Great Holy Days Surrender

The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 1/8/15 | Pastor Iuventus

[marshmallow]

By moving a feast day as ancient as the Epiphany to the nearest Sunday, we run the risk of contradicting the message we claim to proclaim

I had hoped that, in the same way that the Christmas truce of 1914 has captured the popular imagination, the bishops might call a Christmas truce and decide to reinstate the celebration of the Epiphany on January 6. By locating it on the nearest Sunday, Epiphany rather easily acquires the atmosphere of a Sunday evening before the Monday morning feeling: the feast to mark the end of the Christmas shutdown. Schools and offices return to work with the sense that Christmas is over, more than ever encouraging the secularist pattern of trashing Advent by celebrating Christmas throughout it, and then diluting Christmastide by limiting it to the span of a secular holiday period which must also fit in Epiphany, so that we get our religion over and get back to normal. Ironically, the only time children in Catholic schools will have sung a Christmas carol will be Advent. Far from baptising culture, we appear to be abetting it in destroying the pattern of the Christian year.

At Christmas, we celebrate the work of salvation breaking into our time, a fullness of time that originates not with some earthly convenience, but in God’s design. At Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation of God’s Incarnation revealed by a star, a disruption in the celestial ordering of things precisely to make known that there is a new order in the cosmos. By moving a feast day as ancient as the Epiphany, which since the fourth century was kept on January 6, to the nearest convenient Sunday, we run the risk of contradicting the very message we claim to proclaim: that history belongs to God. We proclaim instead a history.....

[Fiji Hill]

Moving holy days like Epiphany to the nearest Sunday is like moving Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, etc. to the nearest Monday. It may be more convenient, but it dilutes the event’s significance.

[rawcatslyentist]

http://biblehub.com/daniel/7-25.htm

And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

[defconw]

If things keep going we may not even have Christmas off anymore. Many already don't. They have to work. It's a shame. Life is to busy for God. Christmas for most people is all about the gifts and that's all that matters. Here at work the Christmas decorations are still up. Not because we are honoring God, but simply because everyone has been to busy to take them down. Or so they think.

I sound old now I know. But the Christmas season is more like the Super Bowl. One big day and then everyone moves on with life.

[Salvation]

I don’t like having the Epiphany on a Sunday.

Have it on January 6th always.

[Biggirl]

Then some folks will say, then take out as a holy day of obligation January 1 instead.