Happy 9th Day of Christmas! The Church has always taken a long view of Christmas. Partly this is to do with the way it organises its calendar, it needs something to fill the space between Christmas Day and its next big marker, Epiphany, on January 6th when we remember the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus. Of course, it allowed for a 12 day Christmas party, a break at the coldest time of the year and it allowed the serious religious types plenty to time to be pious; up to a point. The tail end of Christmas was dominated by what has become known as the feast of fools, when a choir boy was allowed to become Bishop for the day and, according to popular tradition, even the most straight-laced vicar was encouraged to take part in, or be the victim of pranks and jokes. That at least is how the festival is often portrayed and, due to some rearrangements of the calendar in the 18th century, it may have given us our modern April Fool’s Day. However the truth is  more interesting. When the festival was becoming popular, the word “fool” was also to those who led simple lives, the humble and those at the bottom of the social pyramid. Originally it was the “minor” clergy who were celebrated by being given the positions of honour whilst the bishops and the like would do the menial work. Today, we might think of the “fools” as being the unsung helpers who clean churches (or community buildings), who visit the lonely and the sick, who deal with the all the paperwork that accompanies everyday life. A feast of fools, when we celebrate the overlooked, still has things to teach us.
Rev David Poyner