Dec 24th Xmas eve but for night owls there is Midnight Mass

 Some stores are closing at 4 pm,  such as B & Q, others at lunch time.

Waitrose in London. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

In London the roads were busy. Not clogged. But busy. At Waitrose in London the car parks were busy.

 The store was crammed with people. The shelves were emptying fast. The Largest size of Christmas pudding had gone, leaving only the smaller ones. For a family of one or two, that was not much dearer and allowed for portion control and more little pots for storing other leftovers.

Midnight Mass

What do you do if you are alone? Or a couple of you are in a foreign city? I was with my husband in Prague one year. My husband's business associate had paid for us to go to Prague, for a business meeting just before, as well as after Christmas Our contacts were busy with families. I found two places for us to go.

The first was Midnight Mass. Tickets were free, but you had to book, so that they did not exceed the numbers of seats for the comfort of all, and because fire regulations limit the numbers in any building in many countries of the civilized world.

The songs were partly in Czeck, partly in Latin. I had difficulty working out which page we were on. Luckily, eventually, after I had asked the person sitting next to me who spoke no English, a couple of locals swapped seats so somebody who spoke half a dozen relevant words could show me which page was next. She pointed out that the hymn numbers were displayed on an overhead board, where the numbers were intermittently changing. 

If I had realised that the event, advertised in the local free English speaking newspaper, and the newsletter at the hotel breakfast table.

The holiday is bookcased by New Year's Eve, and Midnight Mass, ending with New Year's Day. But the twelve days of Christmas end on January 6th.

New Year

What will be your New Year's Resolution? You have a few more days to plan.

Useful Websites

Waitrose

John Lewis

https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/special-offers/home-furniture-offers/christmas-offers/_/N-nt1x

Who Celebrates Christmas In January? Where? Why?

Merry Christmas with green tabletop tree. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
I have trouble remember which calendar and which countries celebrate in January and whether it's the 6th or 5th or 7th. Please explain - and make it easy to remember.

Answers
Julius Caesar landed in the UK BC. (Never mind accuracy and controversy - we just want the general easy to remember view.)

From him we get our first calendar, the Julian calendar. Julius Caesar, lived before Jesus. His month, July, occurs before Christmas.

Eventually the seasons got out of sync with the calendar.

Later, long after Jesus, along comes Christianity to the Romans, and a Christian Pope, Pope Gregory, who suggest a new calendar (in around 1582 - but no need to remember when).

If you stuck with the old calendar, events are later. The date of Jesus' birth falls in January.

Different countries were faster or slower to adopted the new, Gregorian calendar which we all follow. Many of the traditional, Orthodox, countries kept the old calendar for Christian festivals (just like Jews and Moslems use a different, lunar calendar so the festivals are on different dates each year).

Who celebrates Christmas eve on December 24th and Christmas Day on December 25th?

UK (and former British Empire - now Commonwealth, including New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Czech Republic.)
USA

January 7th
Russiand and adjacent Ukraine.
In alphabetical order:
Belarus, Egypt, Ehtiopia, Georgia, Kazakstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Twelfth Night - Which Night

I've been puzzling over Twelfth Night. When I counted from Christmas eve, Dec 24th, I ended up on Jan 4th. Counting from Christmas Day, Dec 25th, you end up on Jan 5th, last night.

Three Kings Parades, in Spain
On Facebook I saw a picture of the Three Kings parade in Arrecife. Where is Arrecife? In the Canary Islands, a region which is part of Spain.

I recall staying with my parents in Marbella, Spain. We consulted the local English language papers such as Sur, which is a current newspaper in Spain, and local shopkeepers, and learned about a parade at a village along the coast towards Gibraltar and drove there to see it.

I previously consulted Wikipedia and found some countries have a parade on the evening of the 5th, others celebrate more on the 6th.

I'm off to remove my Xmas decorations. They are now in the way as I am back to work. Holiday over - but glad those who are still on holiday have had entertainment.

Angela Lansbury