Christian faith is a story rooted in time and amenable to representation in a calendar

CH answers common questions about the christian calendar

Christian fasts and feasts developed against the background of Jewish practices

Advent preparation spans the four Sundays before Christmas

The name “Christmas” is a shortening of “Christ’s Mass” in Middle English

Prolonged celebrations are supposed to start on Christmas day.

Why did the church settle on the date of January 6?

Believers are commanded to observe the beginning of Lent with repentance and prayer.

Lent is a time of preparation for the celebration of Jesus’s Resurrection and the Easter feast.

The church seasons go around and around year after year.

The week between Palm Sunday and Easter has traditionally been considered the holiest week of the church year.

Jesus’s Resurrection is the event on which everything else about the Christian faith depends.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

The Spirit fifty days after Passover.

Special prayers and offices devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity date back as far as the fourth-century Arian controversy

The term “ordinary” refers to the ordinal numbers used in counting Sundays (First, Second, Third, etc.).

The East has stuck with the Julian calendar

Saints are normally honored on the anniversary of their death

Learn more about the history of the Christian year, and get ideas for incorporating celebrations into your own life.

Reflect on themes of sacred time.