It was, said my parish priest helpfully, a result of the Novus Ordo reordering of the calendar. I’d just buttonholed him – insofar as you can buttonhole someone in vestments – about what I thought was some mistake in the calendar of feasts in my parish newsletter. I counted up the days, and there it was: the Nativity of St John the Baptist on 23 June. But the actual feast is on 24 June. Maybe it was a clerical error?

It turned out that no, it wasn’t. Because the feast of the Sacred Heart fell on this particular Friday, the Nativity of John the Baptist had been displaced to the previous day, normally the vigil. I couldn’t quite believe it. Because the feast of the Baptist is to the summer solstice what the birth of Christ is to the winter solstice; it’s one of the oldest feasts of the calendar, dating from the time when the date of Christmas was established. The angel Gabriel helpfully explained to the Virgin that her cousin Elizabeth was six months’ pregnant at the time Christ was conceived, so the date of the Baptist’s birth followed from there. It was for centuries one of the
only two earthly birthdays celebrated by the Church – that of the Virgin was added much later. It’s a venerable feast, one of the most important of the Church’s year, celebrated over the octave, with the vigil obviously having its own readings. And for 1,500 years the vigil was celebrated across Europe with all the pagan festivities associated with the summer solstice, chiefly to do with fire, which the Church cheerfully appropriated to celebrate the Baptist who was a burning light.