By the third century things were beginning to change and by the fifth century most Saturday observance had gone; perhaps the last vestige is the service of Vespers on a Saturday evening, which we still do today. Over the course of time the number of Saints with feast days multiplied and the eventual result was a plethora of holy days.

After the schism of 1054, Eastern saints went out of favour in the West (and vice versa), but then new ones came along and were canonised by the Roman Catholic Church.

Henry VIII (1509-1547) changed all that. The result of his break with Rome was the gradual adoption of fundamentalist Lutheran tenets of Protestantism, which discouraged the practice of praying to saints.

Moving on we come to Oliver Cromwell and his utter suppression of all things 'Papist', and then through the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Settlement which ensured a Protestant succession and placed restrictions on Roman Catholics and others, some of which are still in force today. England was, by virtue of its monarchy, its law and its Established Church, a Protestant country.

So the number of holy days decreased. By the end of Queen Victoria's reign Sunday observance was also in serious decline. New industries meant that people had to work on Sundays. Then holy days were superseded by things like Bank Holidays, as materialism encroached, until we now have a situation of empty churches and overcrowded shopping malls on the day the Lord gave us. Indeed since people like Thomas Cook invented the idea of visiting other places and staying for a few days, as a means of getting away from it all and recharging the batteries, very few people think of holidays as holy at all.

This has been a very quick flip through the history books with which, I fear, historians among you will find fault, but the fact is that these days in the West religious observance is, for many, confined to Christmas and Easter. Even then the commercial aspect of Christmas is gradually strangling the true message out of it and Easter has become a festival of chicks and chocolate. Whit represents the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Whit holiday used to be the day following Whit Sunday when, particularly in the north of England, Whit Walks were held as processions of witness. But when the May bank holidays were last juggled around we adopted the last Monday of May as a holiday, irrespective of whether it coincides with Whitsuntide or not.

The Orthodox approach, as with everything else, is based on Tradition. We don't commercialise Easter out of existence because it is too important to us. Without the Resurrection there is nothing. Christmas also has a sacred and solemn meaning above everything else. We commemorate on every day of the year the feast of one or more Saints, ancient or modern and even Old Testament prophets who bore witness of the great things to come. In the case of an Apostle, the Gospel reading appointed is John 21:15-25 in which Jesus charges Peter to 'Feed My sheep'. There may also be a reading from the Acts of the Apostles or one of the Epistles in which the Saint of the day is referred to.

We all take holidays - in the form of a week or fortnight in foreign parts, a day trip to a local beauty spot or even just a day off work to do the garden. This sort of thing is important to our overall wellbeing but it should not be confused with the holiness aspect. On the feasts of major saints there may well be services to attend in Church. Even for the minor ones - from the earliest Christian converts to the men and women who died defending the faith in Stalinist Russia - it is still possible to spend five minutes thinking about their lives, their faith and the courage many of them showed for it. This sort of activity is surely an important part of our spiritual development.

As Thomas Carlyle said 'One cannot better profit oneself than by five minutes spent in the company of a great man', so our Christian lives can be enhanced by a contemplation of holy and righteous men an women who have preceded us.

John Moore