Worship

Christian Calender

There are many ways to enrich our celebration of the Christian year from using seasonal words, the collects [prayers] and lectionary [Bible] readings are designed to have a seasonal flavour as well as an appropriate seasonal preface in the Eucharistic prayer and other optional seasonal materials. The choice of music is another major factor in helping to celebrate the seasons of the Christian year. It is obviously important to select hymns, songs and anthems, the words of which fit the seasonal theme, but the mood and style of the music itself also contribute to the ‘feel’ of the worship.

In some churches, different colours are used during the year for the vestments of the ministers, the frontals and the hangings at the pulpit and lectern. The pattern of colour usage varies from place to place, but outlined below are the most common.

Christian Calender

Advent - Purple

The four weeks preceding Christmas, up to and including Christmas Eve.
Purple can symbolize pain, suffering, and therefore mourning and penitence. It is the liturgical colour for the Season of Lent. It is the colour of royalty, so traditionally has also been used for Advent.

Christmas - White or Gold

White symbolizes purity, holiness, and virtue, as well as respect and reverence. White is used for all high Holy Days and festival days of the Church Year, especially the seasons of Christmas and Easter, as well as for baptism, marriage, ordination, and dedications. It is also used for funerals as a symbol of the resurrection. Gold symbolizes what is precious and valuable, and so symbolizes majesty, joy, and celebration. Because of its brightness metallic gold also symbolizes the presence of God. It is most often used with white for high Holy Days and festival days. Gold is also an indestructible element.

Epiphany – 6 January - White

The Baptism of Christ [the First Sunday of Epiphany]
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple – Candlemass – 2 February

Ordinary Time - Green

Green symbolizes the renewal of vegetation and generally of living things and growth, the promise of new life. It is used for the Season of Epiphany between Transfiguration Sunday and the beginning of Lent, and for Ordinary Time between Trinity Sunday (first Sunday after Pentecost) and the beginning of Advent.

Exceptions

Lent - Purple

  • Palm Sunday - Red
  • Maundy Thursday - White
  • Good Friday - None stripped alter
  • Easter Eve - None stripped alter

Easter - White or Gold

  • Pentecost [Whit Sunday] - Red

Ordinary Time - Green

  • Trinity Sunday - White
  • All Saints’ & All Souls’ Day - White

Kingdom Season - Red

Red is the colour of blood, of fire, and of kingship and is used during Holy Week and for the festivals of martyrs, as well as on the Feast of Pentecost and for other services which focus on the gift of the Holy Spirit. It may also be used in the period before Advent between the feasts of All Saints and Christ the King as the Church reflects on the reign of Christ in heaven and on earth.