“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.” Matthew 2:11 Each year, when we celebrate Epiphany, we have the same gospel reading. The visit of the Magi only appears once in the Bible, in the passage we heard from Matthew’s gospel. We know it well. We probably all know already, for example, that nowhere in his account, does Matthew say that the travellers from the East were Kings, nor that there were th

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”. John 1:5 In the seventeenth century, during the Civil war, parliament passed legislation that banned the celebration of frivolous additions to the religious calendar, especially Christmas. The attempts by puritans to squash Christmas celebrations continued under Cromwell’s Protectorate. They didn’t like all the mid-winter festivities that went with it, thinking them excessive and irrever