Purple Monday

Today, the first Candredi (Monday) of Brighe, is a day known as Purple Monday. This is the very beginning of the Eastre cycle: the long Nativity season is finally fully over and now we begin to prepare for the next great Event of our calendar. It is known as “Purple” for the altar cloth, which was green and then white or gold for the Advent through Nativity season, now changes to purple, the colour of penitence (used from now until the end of Moura).

Some Madrians saw the period between Duodecima and Purple Monday as the very last vestiges of the Nativity season, a time when things still felt a bit festive and decorations could linger (depending on tradition; some take all decorations down by midnight on Duodecima itself). Purple Monday arrives to put the final close to the winter holiday season and begins to direct our attention to the coming season. The period after Purple Monday is a semi-penitential, meaning that we use this time to rein in whatever excesses we may have indulged in for the holidays and take a look at ourselves and where our faults may be creeping in too much. Easing “back into the saddle” as it were, giving ourselves time to come back to what we were before the winter period, lets us properly assess what actually needs addressing and what was temporary indulgence once we enter the properly penitential period of Moura.