Seasons and Liturgical Colours
The seasons of the Christian year are still new to many in the Reform
wing of the Protestant Church. In the United Church of Canada it
has really been only in the last 25-30 years that the use of seasons in
liturgy has become common. Although the idea of seasons did not
come into common use in the Church until the fourth century, it was
soon a universal practice in the Eastern, Western, and African
Churches. The Protestant Reformation questioned many of the
practices of the Roman Church and many of the Protestant Churches
ceased celebrating the Seasons. In the Ecumenical movement of the
last 30 years, most mainline Protestant Churches have reclaimed the
practice of the Seasons.
The dates of the festivals and seasons are difficult mathematical and
liturgical calculations. Christmas in most of the Western Church
always falls on the same date. Using the Gregorian calendar,
December 25th is Christmas Day, and Advent is the season beginning four
Sundays before that date. Christmas in the East is celebrated
according to a modified Julian Calendar, on January 7th. The
Gregorian calendar came into effect as a way of accounting for the
difficulty of reckoning seasons, given the addition of a day every four
years. Pope Paul the III became concerned that Easter by the 16th
Century was beginning to slip into summer. He commissioned a
group of astronomers to come up with a calendar that corrected for the
solar seasons, giving birth to the now nearly universal use of the
Gregorian calendar (which came into use under his successor Gregorius).
The date of Easter governs the length of all the other seasons and the
date for other Holy Days. Easter in the Orthodox and Western churches
is not often on the same date. But how is the date
calculated? The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules that
determine the date of Easter trace back to 325 CE at the First Council
of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time, the
Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar).
The Council decided to keep Easter on a Sunday, the same Sunday
throughout the world. The Council constructed special tables to compute
the date. These tables were revised in the following few centuries,
resulting eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot
of Scythia, Dionysis Exiguus. The usual statement, that Easter Day is
the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal
equinox, is not a precise summary of the actual ecclesiastical rules.
The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an
ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less,
in step with the astronomical Moon. The resulting calculation means
that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25. The
Gregorian dates for the ecclesiastical full moon come from the
Gregorian tables. Therefore, the civil date of Easter depends upon
which tables - Gregorian or pre-Gregorian - are used. The western
(Roman Catholic and Protestant) Christian churches use the Gregorian
tables; many eastern (Orthodox) Christian churches use the older tables
based on the Julian Calendar.
Here in brief are the Seasons, Lengths and Colours
Advent:
Colour: Purple or Blue for
contemplation and preparation. The Season begins the fourth
Sunday before Christmas and continues until Christmas Eve.
Christmas:
Colour: White for birth and newness. Always begins on Christmas
Eve, is celebrated December 25th, and extend for twelve days until
January 5th
Epiphany:
Colour: White for Light and beginnings. Because Epiphany is calculated
always to begin January 6th and Easter is a moveable celebration,
Epiphany can be as short as 30 days or as long as 58-60 days.
Lent:
Colour: Purple for Confession,
Contemplation and Preparation. Lent is the forty weekdays before
Easter beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending Maundy Thursday.
Sundays are not counted in the calculation.
Easter:
Colour: White and Gold
representing the New Birth in resurrection and gold the triumph of life
over death. Easter lasts for fifty days ending in Pentecost.
Pentecost:
Colour: Red representing the Fire
of the Spirit. Pentecost is a Sunday celebrating the birth of the
community called church.
Season
After Pentecost:
Colour: Green representing the
growth of the Church. This is the longest season of the year,
beginning after Pentecost Sunday and extending until the Sunday before
Advent. It is a season where we think of the Spirit working in the day
to day life of the church and its people.
There are other special Sundays in the Church year and some have
colours attached to them, but most use the colour of the season in
which they are celebrated.