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Lead book review

How we lost the seasons

Nick Groom's The Seasons is an elegy to a time when we lived according to the farming and religious cycles — and a plea for us to attend village festivals and bonfire nights

4 January 2014

9:00 AM

4 January 2014

9:00 AM

The Seasons: An Elegy for the Passing of the Year Nick Groom

Atlantic Books, pp.400, £22, ISBN: 9781848871618

So, what are you doing with your Christmas decorations? Still up? Did the tree get put out on 2 January? Maybe you’re holding out until the Twelfth Day, on the basis that it’s bad luck to have the decorations up after that? Or are you going out on a limb and keeping your holly, bay and ivy up until 2 February, Candlemas? This last is in fact the correct answer for traditionalists; prior to Victorian times, people kept the Christmas season going, along with the greenery, right up until Candlemas.

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