Ascension Day

How is it that those from the protestant wing of Christendom don't tend to celebrate Ascension Day? This day - today - 40 days after Easter, celebrates the end of Christ's ministry on earth. It's a day for closure, celebration, for victory. A veritable feast day. I confess that it has all but passed me by. I would have gone to the Cathedral service ... but I, er, forgot.

I know that some people celebrate festivals of the church not for their own sake, but because they represent "an opportunity" to "reach" people. I understand that when my parents were younger, our "tribe" celebrated Easter only insofar as it was an opportunity to get together over a long weekend (in England, we have public holidays on Good Friday and Easter Monday) for a conference, not as a specific celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection. So, I guess, with Ascension-tide having a lower profile in the wider community (and no public holiday!), there's been no reason to mark it.

But what a narrow view of festivals this is. Primarily, surely, they belong to the Christian community. They are an opportunity to mark the turning of the year, and to rehearse the details of our shared faith; to teach the young, and to cure us of narrow emphasis. The liturgical traditions, with their set readings covering the whole bible through the year, and festivals to mark all the major events of Christ's life (and other events too), have much to teach the rest of us. Slavish adherence to that Church calendar may be out of keeping with the modern age, and it certainly isn't an essential, but I'm increasingly convinced that if we overlook these markers of the changing seasons of the year, we are the lesser for it.