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In this post, we talk about why it is so important to orient your year around a calendar that prioritizes God. Then, we talk about why the church calendar helps to focus our year on worshipping God through its holidays and traditions. Finally, we break down the different parts of the church calendar. This is part of our series on getting things done from a biblical perspective.
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The New Year
We gathered around watching the ball drop. The night, filled with the annual tradition of Chinese take-out, sparkling grape juice (or wine), and lots of good friends and family, culminating in the countdown.
“10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1!”
Then, we took off running outside lighting sparklers to run down the street and back yelling, “Pandemonium” (an inside joke in our family dating back to the Y2K incident in 2000). The waving off our sparklers, along with all of our other New Year’s Eve festivities, harkened the beginning of the New Year.
As we rung in the New Year, we looked forward to all the opportunities and special moments that would be ushered in.
When do you feel like your year begins?
Some of us feel like the fresh start of the New Year in January helps to give a renewed vigor to our goals and dreams.
For others of us, our calendar might be more aligned to the Academic Year, with August bringing in new goals, curriculum, and a special first day of school outfit. (Which I definitely bought for myself even when I was a teacher.)
Is your calendar aligned with the fiscal year? Your birthdays? National holidays? Community events?
As humans, we are all created to desire a cyclical schedule that brings with it simultaneous change and consistency. We are always moving forward to a new day, a new season, and a new year. But, we have consistency over time as the things we experienced in the past are repeated again year after year.
How do you orient your days, weeks, and years? What calendar do you follow?
We orient our days around the calendar we follow.
We all orient our schedules, our calendars, and our days around something. For some of us, that may be centered around what is happening at school, whether that is homeschool or public school. Others of us orient our schedules around work. The calendar given by these institutions focuses our year on that thing. It establishes rhythms of rest and work.
When we live by a calendar, our days follow what that calendar prioritizes.
So, if we live by the school calendar, we are going to prioritize what the school prioritizes. August becomes the birth of the new year. We can rest over the holidays, but January and February are schooltime. You can’t travel or do anything family-related then. Spring Break is meant for vacation, but your summer begins only when the last day of school occurs.
This isn’t a bad thing, but the effects of following a calendar are often happening without us knowing it. We don’t realize that we’ve oriented our lives around what the schedule has told us. How we’ve prioritized certain activities or parts of our lives because the calendar told us to.
Your calendar may be oriented around sports schedules – whether that’s the sports of your kids or your favorite football team. It could be oriented around busy times at work. It could be oriented around events that you attend throughout the year.
Our calendars form our liturgy, our worship
In this way, our calendar often dictates our regular activities and habits. Habits are a form of liturgy. Liturgy is a repeated action that is often used in liturgical churches, and it is used to invite the participant into the worship of God. Our habits can similarly invite us into the worship of God if we prioritize God in our daily lives and recognize that what we are doing is meant to teach us something about him and glorify him.
If you prioritize the sports calendar, skipping church on days when your kids have games, your liturgy of life is telling you that you are worshipping sports, not God. You have oriented your life around sports and that has become the object of your worship.
As we create our ideal schedule, we want to consider what calendar we are orienting our life around. What is the object of our worship?
With the Protestant Reformation, we gained so much, but we also lost our religious calendar to orient our life around. People began to rely more on the national calendar, with its holidays. Then, the advent of public school brought the academic calendar so pervasively into the lives of our children that most people now orient their lives around that (even if they have nothing to do with the public school system).
There used to be a calendar that allowed us – forced us even – to reorient our focus towards God and the Bible. But, we lost those habits as we tore down any trappings of legalism or the high church.
Now, we are just bumbling about, every person trying to figure out on their own which habits, holidays, and traditions are worth having and which aren’t.
Following The Church Calendar
After the Reformation, observing the church calendar seems to have fallen out of favor with Protestants, and this trend has been exacerbated with the effects of modernity. Every day is the same, and we are suspect of trying to make any day special. Because of the consumerist tendencies now tied to Christmas, some Christians don’t even celebrate Christ’s birth.
The church calendar provides a communal roadmap of teaching the story of Jesus’ life and early church every year. Holidays can become idols if you worship the holiday more than who it represents, but I think it is important not to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater.’ The good things that we can get from observing these special days more than outweigh the bad.
When we incorporate some elements of the church calendar in our schedules, we are reorienting our lives towards the story of God sending his son to save us and making us in the church his chosen people.
As someone who doesn’t come from a liturgical calendar, I had to do some research to learn what the church calendar even looks like.
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The Church Calendar begins with Advent and Christmas in December
The church calendar begins with the Advent season which is actually defined not as a celebration but as a season of self-control and waiting. Most countries celebrate St. Nicholas Day, which includes stockings and presents, and then there is a period of waiting until Christmastide begins. You can find my Advent devotional here.
Christmastide begins with Christmas Day – with several church backgrounds doing a feast or church service on Christmas Eve – and lasts for the next 12 days until Epiphany on January 6th. This is where the song The 12 Days of Christmas comes from.
This fits nicely with the modern calendar as well as most companies recognize that the week between Christmas and New Year’s is the holiday week. I do know that lots of people now go all out before Christmas so that they are ready to take down the tree as soon as Dec. 26th comes around. However, I would encourage you not to do that. If you need to temper your pre-Christmas celebrations to focus more on the waiting and longing for Christ you can. And, then celebrate fully as you celebrate Christmas and ring in the New Year. Epiphany on Jan. 6th ends the Christmastide season. This honors the Wise Men bringing gifts to Jesus.
The Church Calendar Continues with Lent and Easter in February through April
After the Christmas season, there is a pause, called ordinary time, until Lent begins. Though most countries celebrate Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, or Karnival right before Lent, I don’t think this is a biblical idea. However, I do think that Lent can teach you and your family so much about the idea of fasting. Denying oneself is not a modern idea, and takes some work. Ash Wednesday, which begins Lent, is 6 weeks before Easter. Lent amounts to 40 days of fasting in keeping with the example set by Christ.
For Lent, you could give up sugar, alcohol, meat, dairy, bread, social media, screens, or something else. Importantly, it is not supposed to be a time to get slim and trim or a time that is done for some other selfish reason. Fasting in a biblical sense is done so that you are reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus and your dependence on God for every good thing. As you fast, you are reminded of your need for God, and you go to him in prayer to strengthen you.
Lent ends in Holy Week and culminates in Eastertide. Easter has not undergone the secularization that Christmas has and can sometimes be an afterthought, recognized by maybe a family meal and spring family picture. However, some people have argued that really we should try to make Easter as big of a deal in our families as Christmas is. Some church backgrounds have several services in the week leading up to Easter. Our church has self-led stations of the cross activity set up to walk through on Good Friday, followed by a Sonrise Service on Easter.
Others argue against celebrating Easter for the same reasons they argue against Christmas – that Easter has pagan origins. The argument behind this is that when we celebrate, we are actually worshipping the pagan gods that originated some of the practices surrounding Easter. I don’t agree with this idea. I think God can redeem anything and use it for his glory. We don’t live in a pagan culture, and now, if you think about Easter eggs or spring in general, we think of the new life of Christ, not any pagan god or goddess. As long as you are worshipping God and using that tradition to glorify him, I believe the holiday is beneficial for your family.
The Church Calendar ends with Pentecost in May followed by Ordinary Time
Following Easter is Pentecost a few weeks later. This is celebrated on the 50th day after Easter and represents the Holy Spirit descending on the early church. Some churches honor a fast in between Ascension Day, which occurs 9 days before Pentecost, and Pentecost. Then, on Pentecost, there is a feast, church service, and celebration.
After Pentecost, there is a long amount of time called Ordinary time that lasts until the following advent. This ordinary time mimics the long time of working that we see in Jesus’ ministry and in the church’s ministry as we labor for the return of Christ. In some traditions, this time is called Kingdomtide beginning in August and culminating in a feast right before Advent called the Feast of Christ the King.
Benefits of following the Church Year
There are numerous benefits to following the church year. Here are a few:
- These are the main feasts that are celebrated, and as you can see, there is a balance in this calendar between feasting and fasting.
- There is also the repetition of the life of Jesus if you honor the whole church calendar, not just Christmas and Easter.
- In liturgical churches, the Sunday readings will actually read through the whole Bible over the course of a few years. They will normally read through the life of Christ over the span of Christmastide to Pentecost. Though I do not agree with all of the theology of some liturgical churches, I recognize that many of the evangelical nondenominational churches forego deep scriptural knowledge to talk about topics. Reading through the Bible year after year is so valuable for spiritual development, and we would do much to learn from this liturgical movement.
Additional dates to Celebrate in the Church Calendar
A few other holy days that you could incorporate into your calendar include:
- Reformation Day on October 31st which celebrates when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses onto the church door.
- All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are on Nov. 1st and Nov. 2nd and honor the Christian saints and heroes of the past.
You can also observe our common national holidays, like Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day, and Thanksgiving Day. In the case of Valentine’s Day and St Patrick’s Day, these are days honoring saints. As we discussed in our episode on traditions, just be mindful of what you are teaching as you observe these holidays.
What will your year look like?
We all orient our calendars around something. When we are not being intentional, our calendar is often dictated by the institutions we are a part of. Frequently, that means that we end up worshipping something other than God because we have to prioritize what that calendar prioritizes.
By honoring the church calendar, we can intentionally reorient our days to prioritize – and worship – God.
What calendar do you follow? What days would you like to observe? Comment below and let me know!
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