Human beings live in time and on a planet that changes with the seasons whether we want it to or not. Some seasons are warm, hot or cold and they roll around like clockwork. If we did not change to suit our world then we would dress inappropriately to the weather, eat and drink out of step with conditions and holiday or work at the wrong moments. We would be insane. It is sane to drink hot chocolates on winter nights, wear our shorts in the summer and look for conkers on lovely autumn walks. Change is part of our lives.
To stubbornly hold onto Christmas decorations after the season has past, eat Easter eggs after or before Easter would ruin the observation of those holidays making the things that we do to celebrate them vacant of meaning. Now that we eat Hot Cross buns all year round they are not special to Good Friday and that is the risk we run by not celebrating in the correct season and changing with the seasons.
I like change and think that it gives special meaning to foods and practices that would not be special unless we make them special. Pancakes are just pancakes except on Shrove Tuesday when they become the entire focus of the day. To enjoy Pancake day and not change to Lent robs Pancake day of its special meaning.
The danger is that we do not have to change. We live in a world of environmental controls where our cars, homes and offices are not too hot in the summer and not cold in the winter. We could wear the same clothes all year around and our supermarkets could provide the same food and drink with no alteration. Rather than eat seasonally we could eat blackberries harvested from around the world at anytime we chose. We are a society who eat lamb in winter. I think this is potentially very dangerous and the worst type of danger is the most comfortable. If you don’t need to keep an eye on the weather do you think about your clothes? If you have no sense of seasonable availability do you think about your meals? Are we becoming a society that simply does not have to think and use our God given brains to enjoy the seasons rather than live in a perpetual comfortable seasonless world? Change is part of the human condition and embracing change brings benefits not least that we use our brains and don’t wander mindlessly from experience to experience. One day I decided to change my mind and dress, eat and experience winter and I enjoyed it all the more.