Lentorama 2021: Take Your Holiday to Go

Day 2: Feast of the Holy Winding Sheet of Christ

Over time there have been several feasts created by local churches in honor of a relic which purportedly was the sheet in which Christ was entombed. That there were more than one of these feasts - thanks to their being more than one sheet - should tell you something about the church and relics. 

In any case, this particular feast started around 1495, celebrating the sheet that has come to be popularly known as the Shroud of Turin. Pope Julius II approved the celebration of the feast in 1506, and it got its current date (Shrove Tuesday) from Pope Pius XII in 1958.

Why Pius decided to move the date nearly 500 years after the feast was approved isn't clear. Pius did undertake a number of reforms during his papacy, and this may have been a casualty of making other changes to the liturgical calendar. In some places it looks like the change didn't stick, as there are contemporary references to the feast taking place on May 4.

Anyway, as the linked article mentions, this is not a particularly notable feast in the US. I can honestly say I'd never heard of it prior to yesterday, and it's likely I won't hear about it again after today.