Our “Advent” thus begins in the last week of September, but really gains momentum with the beginning of the Nativity Fast on the Feast of St. Philip (14 November) and lasting until the Eve of the Nativity (24 December). During this 40-day fast, sometimes called “Winter Lent”, we abstain from meat, dairy products, eggs, wine and oil, as well as attending additional evening services such as Paraclesis (Consolation).

For those of us who follow the discipline, the whole regime of fasting, prayer and almsgiving is so counter-cultural (try going to the office Christmas party while in the midst of the fast) as to make one keenly aware of the deep longing for the Messiah that afflicted the Jews at the time of Christ’s birth, or the cosmic significance of God become man.

Once the Feast has arrived, though, we consume it with gusto: not only do we eat all of the foods we have been avoiding for forty days, but we do not fast for the week after Nativity (normally Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days). And hard on the heels of Nativity comes the Feast of Theophany (Epiphany) on 6 January. A far more significant feast in the East than in the West, for us it commemorates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the revelation of the Trinity (it’s also the day on which Holy Water is blessed for the coming year, and a major baptismal feast).

But even then, the Nativity season is not over, because on 2 February we celebrate what the West calls the “Presentation of the Lord in the Temple”, but which the East calls the Hypopante, or “Encounter” of the Lord with Simeon the Just, marking (through the words of the Nunc Dimittas) the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles.

And soon after that, we will come to the Sunday of Zaccheus, marking the fourth Sunday before the beginning of Lent, and the start of an entirely different liturgical cycle.