by Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday
Today is Whitsun, once one of the great English Christian festivals, now largely forgotten. One of Philip Larkin’s greatest poems refers to it. Here is an address I once gave, on Whit Sunday, at an Oxford College.
Here we are on the first of the great Christian festivals to have been abolished by the British secular state. Until 50 years ago, Whitsun – which everyone called it then – was a national holiday. Pentecost was a technical term, explained to me in the Scripture classes we still had in those days.
Tomorrow would have been a holiday, and not just tomorrow. The big industrial towns would have held what they called ‘Whit Weeks’, when mines and factories would shut completely. It was the time of year when the poor would traditionally buy new clothes. Christenings and weddings (with much wearing of white, hence ‘Whitsun’) were especially common, which is why there were Whitsun Weddings for Philip Larkin (I’m coming to him) to write about.