The Christian Calendar

It’s the First Day of Christmas. Okay, it’s also called December 26, Boxing Day, a day for major soccer matches or St. Stephen’s Day. But on the western Christian calendar it is universally recognized as the First Day of Christmas, with December 25 being the Feast of Christmas. On the evening of the 25th, the season of Christmas begins.
Then it rolls on twelve days until January 6th (the last day of the Christmas Season). Those are the Twelve Days of Christmas referred to in the carol that was written as an underground Catholic catechism. I find the Christian calendar a useful and happy way of keeping track of the year from a Christian point of view. So, at the risk of inflicting terminal boredom, I shall run through it for people who don’t know it.
It essentially divides the year into two halves—one celebrating the birth, life and death of Christ and the second celebrating the church he left behind. These halves are moveable, as they do not start on fixed days, unlike the secular calendar. Let’s go with the first half.
It begins four Sundays before Christmas Day. That season is called Advent, and it commemorates the long millennia of waiting for the Christ after the promise of his birth was given in Genesis 3. It is a somber season in which no public feasts or festivals are permitted. No weddings, no parties—(this is the Christian calendar). The Christian is expected to spend the season meditating on the sad state of mankind that made it necessary for God to sacrifice his own Son to redeem them.
On the Night of Christmas Eve (midnight, December 24) the mood changes to one of joy. The Christ child is born. Redemption becomes possible. A Twelve Day festival follows (which is a takeoff on both the Roman Saturnalia and the Persian celebration of the birth of Mithra.)
Christians have always felt free to take over someone else’s festivals and symbols. The concept goes back to the Book of Exodus in which the ancient Israelites “despoiled the Egyptians” before leaving captivity in Egypt. Most Christian festivals have a previous pagan counterpart.
On January 6 begins the season of Epiphany (with the Feast of Epiphany also called Twelfth NIght, which the Russian Church celebrates as Christmas)—which celebrates the revealing of the Christ Child to the “Three Kings” (or Magi, since they were not kings but Zoroastrian magicians and astrologers) who came from their observatories in Persia to honor the new King of the Jews. This season lasts through Shrove Tuesday in either February or March.
Interesting people, the Magi. I’ll talk more about them on January 6th.
On Wednesday, forty days before Easter, begins the solemn season of Lent. This is Ash Wednesday, when Christians begin another somber season of contemplating how the treachery of the first humans forced God to send his son to die for them. (The ashes come from the burning of palm leaves that were used in the previous year to celebrate Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter.)
All of these dates move. Easter is often called the moveable feast because it can be celebrated on Sundays dating from the end of March to the third week of April. (In Russia, it can be as late as May.) It is held on the first Sunday after the first moon whose 14th day (full moon) falls on or after March 21.
A week before Easter comes a feast day in Lent—Palm Sunday, which celebrates Christ’s entry into Jerusalem when he is hailed as a king. To show honor, Jewish pilgrims spread their coats and palm branches before him. Then comes holy week, the last week in Lent.
On Maunday Thursday (Holy Thursday), Christians celebrate the night when Christ and his disciples ate their last Passover together. “Maunday” takes off from the Latin version of, “”A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” The Roman Pope follows Christ’s example by washing the feet of several of his ecclesiastical inferiors. (Protestant divines tend not to wash anybody’s feet.)
On Good Friday, Christians of all stripes hold ceremonies to remind themselves of the day when God himself died to provide salvation for men—when God himself descended into Hell to wrench the keys of death and Hell from Satan himself. It is a celebration of the destruction of death itself.
In Christian theology everything before this would be meaningless if Christ remained dead. On Easter Sunday, the third day, Christ rises from Hell and the grave. This is the feast of Easter, the most important Christian Feast. With it begins the season of Easter which lasts 50 days.
This season is divided in two parts. The first celebrates the 40 days after Easter when Christ ascended into Heaven, back where he came from. Some churches celebrate the resurrection on a Sunday, making it the 43rd day after Easter. On the 50th day after Easter comes Pentecost (50) Sunday.
(We would call a period from Sunday to Sunday 49 days, but ancient ways of counting included the first Sunday in the count, making it 50 days.) On Pentecost Sunday begins the half the year that essentially celebrates the Church Christ left behind when he ascended.
It introduces the Third Person of the Christian Trinity—God the Holy Spirit. This is the comforter Christ promised when he told his disciples he was leaving them (Paraclete). He, Christ said, will lead you into all truth. Under his influence, Christians believe, the 27 books of the Christian New Testament were not only written but later designated as canonical in the Fourth Century after Christ.
So he creates the Christian scriptures and he leads the church. The Sunday after Pentecost is the Feast of the Holy Trinity. These are both moveable feasts—the earliest Pentecost can come is May 10, the latest June 13. Every Sunday after Trinity is numbered from Trinity Sunday. This continues until the First Sunday in Advent (four Sundays before Christmas). Obviously that, too, is a variable number.
And this, for those of you who are still awake and with me, is the Christian calendar.