How the Christian Calendar Came To Be

* An important resource for what follows is James F. White's 1990 revised edition of Introduction to Christian Worship.

How we now celebrate the calendar is not in fact how it came to be, though the length of each season actually gives a good indication of their importance and the order in which they developed in the church.

The shocking and unexpected resurrection of Jesus is the defining moment in the Christian calendar.  It is from this point that the Christian way of marking time began.

Sometime after Jesus' ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the followers of Jesus began to gather before daybreak on "the Lord's Day" - Sunday - to celebrate the Eucharist (the breaking and sharing of Jesus body and blood in bread and wine) together.  Their main worship time was still in the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday.  Gradually, as more Gentiles also became disciples of Jesus and as tensions arose between those Jews who did follow Jesus and those who did not, Christians began to worship together on Sunday.  Justin Martyr, writing in about 155 A.D. states "we all hold this common gathering on Sunday since it is the first day, on which God transforming darkness and matter made the universe, and Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead on the same day."

The main focus of the year was the Pascha (Greek from the Hebrew for "Passover") - the celebration of the Passover and of Jesus' resurrection, the two being linked together in both timing and theology.  The triduum, Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday, were first celebrated as a whole together. By the mid 300s, at first in Jerusalem, each of the events from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday were divided into their own distinct services at the place each had occurred, apparently as a way to try and cope with the number of pilgrims present.  By the end of the 300s, the full Holy Week as we know it now was in place.

The weeks following the Pascha, a time of peace and joy, lead up to the next most important celebration in the early church - Pentecost.  This Jewish festival of first fruits and of the giving of the law at Sinai became for Christians about the giving of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. For the first 300 year, the ascension of Jesus was also celebrated on the day of Pentecost.  By the end of the 4th century a separate day, a week before Pentecost, was established to mark the ascension of Jesus.

After the Pascha and Pentecost on the yearly Christian calendar, the next important festival was that of Epiphany.  Epiphany witnesses to what God is up to in Jesus;  it reveals to all that it is in Jesus we meet the God who is our Creator.  In the early church this feast marked Jesus' birth, the visit of the Magi, Jesus' baptism and his first miracle (in the gospel of John) of turning water into wine.

There is the possibility that Lent was at first a forty day fast undertaken in Egypt just after Epiphany to coincide with Jesus' forty days in the wilderness after his baptism.  By 325 A.D., no doubt aided by what had been the intensified training of new disciples before their baptism at Easter, the council of Nicaea had shifted it somewhat so that these forty days came right before Easter.  A hundred years later, by the time of Augustine, Lent was a time for all Christians to prepare their hearts and minds for the celebration of the Great Triduum (Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday).

Advent began in the church as a time of preparation for the celebration of Epiphany.  In 380 A.D. a decree from a council in Spain mentions the importance of regular attendance in church from December 17 until Epiphany on January 6th.  Not long afterward in Gaul a forty day season of preparation for Epiphany was in practice.

The day and season of Christmas was one of the most recent developments in the Christian calendar.  Before 300 A.D. the marking of the birth of Christ was part of the celebration of Epiphany.  Christmas is first mentioned in writing in a Roman document from 354 A.D.  The distortion of the importance of Christmas was quick to take hold.  Already by 387 A.D. the great preacher, John Chrysostom mentions in his Epiphany Day sermon, "Why then is this day called Epiphany?  Because it was not when he was born that he became manifest to all, but when he was baptized;  for up to this day he was unknown to the multitudes."  This overemphasis of Christmas was not helped when Rome shifted Advent's focus from Epiphany to Christmas.

Knowing the above history and the importance of each season to the church will be helpful for us both in our congregations and at home as we contemplate what we emphasize in our marking of Christian time.