This morning the Stationers’ Company walked in procession in light rain to St Paul’s Cathedral for its annual service. On return to the livery hall the members and guests were due to enjoy a buffet lunch known as ‘cakes and ale’. The annual Shrove Tuesday event dates from 1612 but until recently was held on […]

Lent starts in early March. The first day of the month is Shrove Tuesday and you can read about all the traditional pre-Lent fun as well why we eat pancakes in Keeping Lent & Easter. The book guides you through the forty days of Lent to Easter. After Mothering Sunday, Lent’s halfway point at the […]

Advent turns on the 17 December as the O Antiphons are heard daily at Mass and Evening Prayer. They are familiar to many as we hear five of them in the Advent hymn O Come, O come, Emmanuel. We are looking at last towards the birth of Christ. By tradition it is now that Mary […]

St Lucy’s Day, Monday 13 December, provides another suggestion of the coming light of Christ. It is an important stepping stone in Advent for those in Scandinavia, Sicily and Venice. In Swedish homes and churches it is the tradition for girls to dress as Lucy and wear a crown of candles to recall the manner […]

The Translation of the Holy House of Loreto on 10 December marks the arrival on this day in Italy of the front section of the house where Mary lived in Nazareth. It took several years to move the house although the iconography suggests that angels carried the little building. This was based on a misunderstanding. […]

The Immaculate Conception on 8 December is when we recall the conception of the Virgin Mary by her parents Anne and Joachim. Immaculate refers to their daughter being born free from sin in preparation for her destiny as Mother of Jesus. This afternoon the Pope would normally place white roses at the base of the […]

The pandemic has made a lot of people lose a sense of time and season. The virus has also caused a huge loss of income for shops resulting in the earliest ever display of Christmas decorations in shopping malls and an unseasonal appearance of Father Christmas. If you celebrate early what happens when the real […]

The ancient Holy Week service of Tenebrae is now often held on Wednesday and this year there are opportunities to be present online. ‘This arduous service has mystical beauty,’ observed art historian Brian Sewell who described it as ‘the most disturbing and convincing service’, which was also ‘poetic, theatrical and terrible’. The responses in this […]

Today Thursday 25 March is a bright pause in Lent to look ahead nine months to Christmas. If Christmas is on 25 December so 25 March must be the Annunciation. On this day we recall the Virgin Mary being visited in her Nazareth home by an angel and informed that she would give birth to […]

Today’s 17 March St Patrick’s Day celebrations will for a second year be muted by the virus. But this is not rare for until very recently St Patrick’s Day in Ireland was a quiet family day like Christmas Day with even the pubs closed. Patrick is also patron of Montserrat in the West Indies and […]