326/365 Liturgical Year Part Two

So the conventional wisdom holds that Christmas was picked for the Solstice because we wanted to convert more pagans, that we essentially stole their holiday. But considering the fact that we were celebrating the conception (March 25) 130 years before any mention of celebrating Christmas, that kind of blows that out of the water...

But I will admit that Christmas trees and yule logs and mistletoe and all that jazz? Totally stolen. Or adopted. Or whatever.

So anyway, now we had these two big feasts, Easter and Christmas, and two seasons of preparation beforehand, Lent and Advent. In between these two feasts is what the atrium calls the "growing time" (and it helps that it is green): ordinary time.

Ordinary time is usually ordinary, but it might be better to call it Ordinal Time. It is counted. That's all. We tick off the Sundays: 9th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, and so forth. It fills the gap between the Baptism of Christ in January and Ash Wednesday, and then between Pentecost and the end of the church year in late November. It is the time for the Word of God to settle into our hearts and take root. Because if all we had were feasts and preparations for feasts, well, you can imagine the spiritual fatigue. We need down-time. We need growing time.