Every now and then, a significant day will approach and with great preparation and anticipation people will look forward to it.
And sometimes, disaster strikes! The party is ruined, the celebration canceled and the whole event has to be called off.
Maybe its a birthday, an anniversary or a special holiday. Whatever it is, the special day won't be honored and that's often a great disappointment to everyone involved.
But it need not be. That's because the thing you're celebrating is the important part, not the exact moment on the calendar when you do it.
The same is true of religious holidays.
One of the weird lines of attack frequently used by atheists (and, alas, some ill-educated Protestant scholars), is that the dates of the Christian calendar don't line up with historical events. This usually turns on things like whether Jesus was actually born on December 25, but a number of feast days are regularly pilloried as having been "put there" either arbitrarily, or in an effort to "steal" a pagan holiday.
Some of these dates are known, but many are approximate. Some use some rather sophisticated numerology (based sacred numbers) to calculate the date. Easter moves every year, but that doesn't affect the overall importance of the Resurrection.
I learned this early on, when my grandparents on my father's side decided that rather than force their children to choose between where to be on the holidays, they would slot their celebration to avoid conflict. Thus, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the Saturday afterwards. Christmas was observed, but in the evening – the morning was for the other in-laws. Easter might also be moved to a week later.
The point was to come together.
This is not to say that a timely greeting or wish doesn't have it's place, only that there's no reason not to move a celebration to when it's more convenient.
The Church Fathers did exactly this, and people can do the same today.
Chateau Lloyd 
Leave a comment