Raise the Red Lanterns

One of my resolutions was to have more paper lanterns to decorate the church for Pentecost, and so I bought another couple of dozen. They will now march along the aisles and across the chancel arch in a near-continuous red line.

Pentecost is still the great feast day that gets left out no matter how we clergy try to get people interested. Once upon a time the following Monday was a Bank Holiday until 1971 when it was stripped of that status and the break was transferred to the last Monday in May, and long before that the succeeding week - the octave, really - was a time when everyone downed tools who could. Church and Chapel Sunday Schools would traditionally hold some kind of festivity in Whitsuntide, even if (as I found when I looked into the history of High Wycombe many years ago) it was just a walk to the river meadows half a mile away and a picnic. But now Pentecost slips into the background even for people who might often find themselves in church.

The loss of the Pentecost observance to the secular 'late May Bank Holiday' at least shows that the State now accepts that people should have statutory time away from paid labour and in that sense the Church has done its work in that respect. And I'm not convinced if we had a Pentecost holiday now it would have any effect on the numbers who turned up to make their communion!