What Is the Church Calendar?
Spiritual Time-Keeping
The church calendar offers a way to practice time-keeping spirituality, shaped by Jesus’ declaration that “the time is fulfilled.” It rests on the Christian belief that time forms our desires. While clock time and secular calendars often exhaust us and tempt us to race against, escape from, or fear time, God’s appointed, kingdom-filled time interrupts and gives meaning to our days.
Augustine observed that we are “scattered in times”—stretched between memory, attention, and expectation, restless because only God is eternal and holds all moments together.
The church calendar helps gather our fragmented lives back into God’s life. Through the yearly rhythm of liturgical seasons, it punctures our clocks and calendars with the “already-not yet” of God’s kingdom. It teaches us to approach our days as a rhythm rather than a race, our weeks as a cathedral rather than a prison, and our years as a pilgrimage rather than a cycle of consumption.
Ultimately, the church calendar orders our lives not by productivity or anxiety, but by the saving story of Jesus Christ. As you will see below, the church year is marked by distinct seasons, each with its own theological emphasis, spiritual mood, and liturgical color.
Video by Christ Church Anglican
Advent
Four weeks before Christmas
Color: Purple (or Blue in some traditions)
Theme: Preparation, waiting, expectation—longing for Christ’s coming
Focus: The four last things (death, judgment, heaven, hell) and Christ’s return
Spiritual Posture: Penitential waiting and hopeful anticipation
The season of Advent is the time we remember that period of history when we were still in darkness, waiting for the Light of the World to come. In our culture’s rituals of this season, we rush headlong into partying, feasting, shopping, and celebrating without waiting, taking stock, and watching for this Light.
But in the historical practice of Advent in the Christian year, the church begins in the dark; we learn again to wait to celebrate, which deepens our eventual Christmas feast. We are preparing ourselves to receive the greatest gift the world has ever been given: the Son of God.
Advent is a season of hopeful expectation and preparation, as the Church anticipates the coming of Christ—both at his birth in Bethlehem many years ago, and at his future coming to judge the world at the end of time. During Advent, we prepare our hearts for the Lord, so that when he comes, he may find us watching and waiting.
Christmastide
December 25–January 5 (The Twelve Days of Christmas)
Color: White (or Gold)
Theme: The Incarnation — “God with us”
Focus: Celebration of Christ’s birth and God taking on human flesh
Spiritual Posture: Joy, wonder, gratitude
Christmas comes from old English meaning the Mass of Christ. Surprisingly, Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. St. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts. Origen asserts that sinners alone, not saints celebrate their birthday.
Nevertheless, the Western church, after thorough reflection on the dates of Christ’s death and resurrection landed on December 25th for Christ’s birth. While this may seem like tedium, it is a sign of how the church wrestled with the Timeless One entering our time.
Christmas celebrates God’s incarnation (in the flesh) in our world. Christmas is all about the amazing truth that God in Christ took on our flesh, our bones, and our human life. The task of the Christmas liturgy is to recall us, amid all the darkness of this world, to this central truth that God was made flesh for the world’s salvation.
Epiphanytide
Season after January 6 until Lent
Color: White (for Epiphany Day), then Green
Theme: Manifestation — Christ revealed to the nations
Focus: The spreading of the Gospel, the mission of the Church, Christ’s light to the world
Key Days: Epiphany (Jan 6), Baptism of the Lord, Transfiguration Sunday
Spiritual Posture: Growth, mission, revelation
Following Advent and Christmas, the church celebrates Epiphany as the public disclosure of Jesus’ identity as the incarnate Son of God and Israel’s promised Messiah.
The gospel stories of this season describe various events that manifest the divinity of Jesus: from the coming of the Magi, to the Baptism of our Lord, to the wedding at Cana, to the calling of the disciples, to various miracles and teachings of Jesus; all of these epiphanic moments are about the “manifestation” of Jesus’ glory. The last Sunday after the Epiphany is always devoted to the Transfiguration, where Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is dramatically revealed to his inner circle of disciples.
As it was for them, so it is for us; we are called to respond to Christ with faith, wonder, and worship. Epiphany runs right up to Ash Wednesday, when the focus turns to his suffering and preparation for death. He sets his face like flint and moves towards Jerusalem and the fate that awaits him there.
Lent
40 days before Easter (not counting Sundays
Color: Purple
Theme: Repentance, preparation, self-examination
Focus: Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness, our journey toward the cross
Key Days: Ash Wednesday (begins Lent), Palm Sunday (begins Holy Week)
Spiritual Posture: Fasting, prayer, penitence, spiritual discipline
From the church’s earliest days, Lent was a time of preparation for Easter. The Resurrection of Christ was celebrated not only each week on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, but also in a special festival of the Resurrection.
As we look forward to the Resurrection, Lent is traditionally focused on repentance. Speaking biblically, to repent means to make a change in our attitudes, words, and lifestyles. The Christian life in its totality is a life of repentance.
Beginning when we first commit our lives to Christ, and continuing throughout our lives, we are more and more turning away from sin and self-centeredness and more and more turning to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to experience true freedom and rest.
Holy Week
Eastertide
Easter Sunday through Pentecost (50 days)
Color: White (or Gold)
Theme: Resurrection, new life, victory over sin and death
Focus: The empty tomb, the risen Christ, our participation in resurrection life
Key Days: Easter Sunday, Ascension Day (40 days after Easter)
Spiritual Posture: Jubilation, celebration, alleluias restored
The fullness of the resurrection requires more than a day to unpack. The Easter season is a fifty-day celebration that ends on Pentecost Sunday (the Greek word pentekoste means “fiftieth”).
The Easter season is a time to let the implications of the resurrection sink in deeper, inviting us to realign our worldview and conform our living to the reality that we have been raised with Christ to new life.
Easter is full of joy and the laughter of love—the grave is empty, love has won, Christ is risen! Give yourself over to the experience of that joy—take in the absolute wonder of God’s purposeful plan of salvation.
Pentecost
Day of Penteocst, 50 days after Easter
Color: Red
Theme: The coming of the Holy Spirit
Focus: The birth of the Church, empowerment for mission
Spiritual Posture: Boldness, mission, Spirit-filled life
The word “Pentecost” comes from the Greek meaning simply “fiftieth.”
Pentecost Sunday ends the season of Easter and symbolizes a new beginning. It celebrates the unleashing of the Holy Spirit on the world and the empowering of the church to reach the world with the gospel.
In remembering Pentecost and living in light of this powerful turning point, the church expresses gratitude to Christ for sending “another counselor” (John 14:16), celebrates the work of the Spirit in the renewal of all creation, and professes its confidence and security in knowing the Spirit’s power is available for its mission.
Ordinary Time
Season after Pentecost (the longest season)
Color: Green
Theme: Growth in grace, living out the Christian life
Focus: Discipleship, sanctification, the ordinary work of faithfulness
Key Days: Trinity Sunday (first Sunday after Pentecost), Christ the King Sunday (last
Sunday before Advent)Spiritual Posture: Steady growth, perseverance, deepening roots
We observe a season of Ordinary Time from Pentecost until Advent, which we count as weeks following Pentecost.
Ordinary from its Latin root means “order.” When we order something, we arrange in a sequence. That is, it is numbered. It is ordinal. Ordinary Time is Ordinal Time.
It is counted time, and it is a time for growth and maturation—a time in which the mystery of Christ is called to penetrate ever more deeply into history until all things are finally caught up in Christ. In this way, there is nothing ordinary about Ordinary Time.