It has two wheels, a fixed one centred on the Incarnation (Advent and Christmas), and a floating one centred on the Crucifixion and Resurrection (Lent, Holy Week and Easter). The shape of the Christian year may be pictured as a bicycle-shaped contraption. Lent, Hilary, Trinity, Michaelmas, the names if not the sacral observance, remain firmly ensconced in English legal, academic and public life. This day marked the first revelation of the Incarnation that was to be celebrated nine months later. The UK tax year begins on 6 April because under the traditional Julian calendar that day was the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March.
This system of corporate timekeeping affects all life, not just cultic observance. It reinforced the basic pattern, while simplifying some aspects of the annual round, using traditional prayers and readings to mark its contours. The Book of Common Prayer gathered the elements of the medieval year into a compact form that has largely survived. Oliver Cromwell, famously, abolished Christmas. Many 16th and 17th century Puritans rejected the traditional observances that marked medieval life. The Book of Common Prayer in the priest's coat pocket, contains an elaborate system, a liturgical orrery, for the public marking of time.
'W hat are days for?' This question, according to Philip Larkin, brings the priest and the doctor, in their long coats, running over the fields.
