Calendar Surfing

I have it on very good authority that the Christmas season—at least, liturgically—isn't over till tomorrow, the first Sunday after Epiphany, when the Church celebrates the Baptism of Jesus, but I am rushing the season by taking my Christmas tree down today. It is a dwarf spruce, and I am taking it to Rockaway, where kind neighbors have consented to adopt it.

Note how deftly the Church has finessed the Feast Formerly Known as the Circumcision. Yes, you thought alternate side was suspended on January 1st for New Year's Day, but traditionally the eighth day after Christmas was the day the infant Jesus was circumcised. Perhaps concerned about the Jewish origins of this feast (Christbris?), the Church has revised its calendar to make January 1st a Marian feast: the Motherhood of Mary, or some such. (I have a new Mary calendar I could consult, but I left it in the car.) And, of course, the Baptism of Jesus took place thirty years later. To celebrate Christ's dip in the River Jordan, here is a link to a great surfing story by Paul McHugh in today's Times.