The Liturgical Year Explained

The liturgical year is the Church's calendar: a repeating cycle that walks through the life of Christ from expectation to birth, ministry, death, resurrection and the sending of the Spirit, and then sits in the long ordinary stretch of living it out.

Its purpose is formation by repetition. A Christian who keeps the calendar spends four weeks a year waiting, forty days examining themselves, fifty days celebrating, and half the year in the ordinary. Over a lifetime that shapes a person differently from a devotional life organised only around what they happen to feel each morning.

It also solves a practical problem. Left to ourselves we read our favourite passages and pray our habitual prayers. The calendar hands you Advent whether or not you feel expectant.

The seasons

Advent — four Sundays before Christmas

Not the run-up to Christmas but a season of its own, and in its older form a penitential one. Two arrivals are in view: the coming of Christ at Bethlehem, and his coming again. The readings early in Advent are about judgment rather than mangers, which surprises people.

Colour: violet, or blue in some Anglican and Lutheran use. Rose on the third Sunday.

Twenty-two to twenty-eight days, depending on which day Christmas falls.

Christmas — 25 December to Epiphany

Twelve days, beginning rather than ending on Christmas Day. The wider culture finishes on the 26th; the Church is just starting.

Colour: white or gold.

Epiphany — 6 January

The manifestation of Christ to the nations — the magi in the Western tradition, the baptism of Christ in the Eastern. The weeks after it run to the start of Lent.

Lent — Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday

Forty days of preparation, modelled on Christ's forty days in the wilderness. The Sundays are not counted — each remains a small Easter — which is why the calendar span is forty-six days.

Traditionally kept with prayer, fasting and almsgiving. See how to observe Lent.

Colour: violet. Rose on the fourth Sunday.

Holy Week and the Triduum

The last week, from Palm Sunday. The Triduum — Maundy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday — is the oldest and most intensely kept stretch of the whole year, and is liturgically a single continuous service. See Holy Week day by day.

Colour: red on Palm Sunday, white on Maundy Thursday, red or black on Good Friday.

Easter — fifty days to Pentecost

A season, not a day. Fifty days, and the longest sustained celebration in the calendar — deliberately longer than Lent.

Colour: white or gold.

Pentecost

The Spirit given, and the Church's birthday. Colour: red.

Ordinary Time

The long green stretch — a few weeks after Epiphany and then roughly half the year from Pentecost to Advent. "Ordinary" from ordinal, meaning counted, not meaning dull. Anglicans often call it the Sundays after Trinity or after Pentecost.

The Western year ends with Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent begins again.

Colour: green.

The colours

Rose deserves a note. Gaudete Sunday in Advent and Laetare Sunday in Lent take their names from the first word of the day's introit — rejoice. Both fall in the middle of a fast, and the lightened colour is the Church declining to be relentless.

How the dates move

The fixed feasts — Christmas, Epiphany, the saints' days — sit on calendar dates and do not move.

Everything in the Easter cycle moves with Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March. From that one date follow Ash Wednesday (forty-six days before), Palm Sunday, the Triduum, Ascension (forty days after), and Pentecost (fifty days after). This is why Lent can begin in early February or well into March.

Advent is simpler: the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day.

How the traditions differ

Catholic and Anglican calendars are close in shape, with differing names for the green season and different saints' days. The Sunday lectionary runs on a three-year cycle of readings, A, B and C.

Lutheran practice follows essentially the Western calendar.

Eastern Orthodox keeps a different year altogether: it begins on 1 September, Great Lent starts on Clean Monday rather than Ash Wednesday, there are four fasting seasons rather than one, and Pascha is calculated on the Julian reckoning, so it usually falls later than Western Easter and sometimes by several weeks. The Orthodox daily readings follow their own single-year cycle.

Reformed and Baptist churches vary widely. Many observe Christmas and Easter and little else by design — the Puritan objection was that Scripture appoints no such calendar. Others have recovered the full year in recent decades.

Common questions

When does the liturgical year begin?

In the Western churches, on the first Sunday of Advent — four Sundays before Christmas, so between 27 November and 3 December. The Eastern Orthodox year begins on 1 September.

What are the liturgical colours and what do they mean?

Violet for Advent and Lent (preparation and penitence), white or gold for Christmas, Easter and feasts of the Lord (joy and glory), green for Ordinary Time (growth), red for Pentecost, Palm Sunday and martyrs (the Spirit and blood), and rose on the third Sunday of Advent and the fourth of Lent, a deliberate lightening in the middle of a fast.

Why is Lent forty days but forty-six on the calendar?

Because the Sundays are not counted. Every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, so it cannot be a fast day even in a penitential season. Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday spans forty-six days, six of which are Sundays, leaving forty days of fast.

How is the date of Easter determined?

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon falling on or after 21 March. Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Ascension and Pentecost all follow from it. The Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar for the calculation, which is why Pascha usually falls later than Western Easter.

Do all Christians follow the liturgical year?

No. Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches keep it closely. Many Reformed, Baptist and non-denominational churches observe only Christmas and Easter, historically on the principle that Scripture appoints no calendar of seasons — though a good many have recovered more of it in recent decades.