Know Tea

The last post gave some background on the origins of the Church Year and why Christians have celebrated the seasons of the Church Year since at least the Fourth Century AD.  In short, observing the seasons and rhythms of the Church Year gives believers a sacred sense of time:  a way to celebrate God’s mighty acts in history.  We celebrate the seasons of the Church Year because our faith is not a timeless mythology.  It is based in historical events, particularly the Christ event:  his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return.  By celebrating these events in a systematic fashion, at the same time every year, the church witnesses that we confess these events to be of such importance that they shape our daily lives.  The Christ Event gives our lives its order and structure.  This is what it means to live the Christian Year.

I think it would be helpful, for those who were not brought up to live the Christian Year, to give a brief overview of the seasons.

Advent – A new Church Year (or Christian Year, or Liturgical Year) begins with the First Sunday of Advent.  This is always the Sunday nearest to November 30.  This year (2009) that means the Church Year begins on November 29.  Advent is always the four Sundays before Christmas.  The Advent season is not the Christmas season.  Christmas is celebratory:  Advent is preparatory.  Advent places us in the shoes of God’s people long ago as they waited and longed for the birth of the Messiah.  Advent also causes us to look ahead to the Second Coming (or Second Advent) of Christ. Advent is as distinct from Christmas as Lent is from Easter.  It has its own hymnody, its own Scripture readings, its own color (purple or blue) and its own character:  that of longing and expectation rather than joy and celebration.  Please see this post for more on Advent’s hymnody.

Christmas – The last day of Advent is December 24.  At sundown on December 24, a new season of the Church Year begins:  the season of Christmas.  That’s right, by December 25, the Christmas Season has scarcely begun.  December 26 is not the day to take down the Tree:  it’s not the “day after Christmas.”  December 26th is the Second Day of Christmas.  The Christmas Season is a 12-day celebration, from December 25 through January 5.  Christmas carols, Christmas decorations, Christmas parties, Christmas food, Christmas presents, etc., are appropriate for the entire Twelve Days of Christmas, not just for the First Day of Christmas (December 25).  Each of us gets one day per year for a birthday:  doesn’t Jesus deserve more than one day?  Thanksgiving has nothing whatsoever to do with the timing of the Christmas season.  Thanksgiving is a civil holiday in the United States only, and one that has been around as a national holiday only since the time of Abraham Lincoln.  The idea of the day after Thanksgiving being the start of the Christmas Season dates only to the 1920’s in the U.S. and is the invention of retailers, Macy’s in particular, in order to get people to shop earlier and buy more.  The Christmas Season, in Christian tradition, begins on Christmas Eve. Christmas’s color is white.

Epiphany – January 6 was celebrated in the East as the Feast of the Nativity and was adopted in the West as the celebration of the arrival of the Magi or Wise Men.  According to Matthew 2, the Magi did not arrive the night Jesus was born, but almost two years later.  The account in Matthew said they arrived at the house where Mary and Joseph were living, not at a stable.  (Jesus did not live in a barn for two years.)  Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, followed by Epiphany, helps us to remember the events as the Gospel records them.  It also gives us a chance to emphasize the Light of Christ going into all the world.  In Louisiana and all along the Gulf Coast of the U.S., Epiphany is the first day to eat King Cake, a dessert baked in a ring shape and festively decorated like a crown in honor of the “Three Kings.”  King Cake festivities continue until the beginning of Lent.  The color for Epiphany and the Sunday right after Epiphany is white, and the following Sundays are green.

Lent – This is a forty-day period of preparation for Easter, commemorating the forty days Christ fasted in the wilderness.  Lent always begins on a Wednesday, called Ash Wednesday (ashes being a symbol of repentance going back to the Old Testament).  Now if you count out the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter on a calendar, you’ll find that Lent is 46 days, not 40.  This is because the Sundays do not count!  Every Sunday of the year, every one, is a feast day.  Every Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Christ, so Sunday is never a fast day. While Lent is a penitential season, the Sundays in Lent are feast days, as are all other Sundays.  That’s why we call them the Sundays in Lent, not the Sundays of Lent.  While they occur within the time frame of Lent, they do not actually belong to Lent.  The color for Lent is purple.

Holy Week – Although it is really a part of Lent rather than its own season, we consider Holy Week by itself because of the important events that happened during this week, beginning with Christ’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Holy Week also contains Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday), the night Christ insituted the Lord’s Supper, washed his disciples feet, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, was betrayed by Judas, and was put on trial.  Holy Week ends with Good Friday (the day of the Crucifixion) and Holy Saturday (the day Christ’s body was in the tomb).  The color for Holy Week is red or crimson, with Good Friday and Holy Saturday having no color (all decorations are removed from the church after the Maundy Thursday service).

Easter – This is called  “the queen of seasons” in one of the most ancient and beloved hymns for this feast.  Easter was the very first feast day of the ancient church, and the most important.  Fittingly, it is the longest celebratory season of the Church Year.  While Christmas is twelve days long (December 25 – January 5), Easter is fifty days long:  from Easter Sunday (or the First Sunday of Easter) until the Day of Pentecost.  As is the case of Christmas hymns being intended for the entire Twelve Days of Christmas, the hymnody of Easter is most appropriate for all of the Great Fifty Days.  Sadly, many Christians only sing of the Resurrection of Christ on one day of the year:  Easter Sunday.  Just as Christmas is more than one day, so is Easter.  Forty days into the Easter season is Ascension Day, because the book of Acts tells us that Christ ascended into heaven forty days after he rose again.  The color for Easter is white, the same as Christmas, Epiphany, and other joyful occasions of the Church Year.

Pentecost – Fifty days after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles.  They preached to the crowds who were gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks, known in Greek as Pentecost, and over 3,000 people were converted and baptized.  Ever since, Christians have celebrated Pentecost as a “birthday” of sorts for the church.  The color for Pentecost is red, for the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The very next Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday that honors a doctrine rather than an event.  The season after Pentecost is a season of reflection (as are the Sundays after Epiphany) that extends through the summer and into the fall.  The very last Sunday of this season, and of the Church Year, is called Christ the King Sunday, celebrating the fact that Christ rules and reigns from his heavenly throne right now.  Following Christ the King is the First Sunday of Advent of a brand-new Church Year, and so the cycle begins again.

This rhythm of life has guided and shaped generations of Christians.  Over 1700 years of Christian wisdom and experience have shown that this rhythm is beneficial to our spiritual health.  Far more beneficial, to my way of thinking, than the typical “holy days” of many churches today:  Labor Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.  Such occasions are fine as civil holidays, but they tell us nothing of the redemptive work of Christ in his life, death, and resurrection.  Besides, when we gather for worship we gather as citizens of the kingdom of God, not simply citizens of the United States.  The kingdom of God transcends all boundaries of nationality, as well as race and the other things we use to distance ourselves from one another.