Years ago, a friend of mine led a conversational ESL class for immigrant women in her town. She covered all the things you need to know to get established in a foreign culture. Registering kids for school, medical care, routes. How to grocery shop and cook with unknown ingredients. How to run appliances they had never even seen before. But the most surprising thing to me was that her team taught these women about their new country’s holidays. The more I have thought about it, the more it makes sense.
If you or I were airdropped/plopped into a totally foreign culture, even if we instantly knew how to speak the language, we wouldn’t understand that culture or its people until we had a sense of their holidays and the rhythm of their years.
Just like fish don’t think much about what it is like to swim in water, we forget that our understanding and sense of ourselves is shaped by the special days in our own culture.
But imagine you know nothing about Western (and particularly American culture) and let these words roll over you: New Year’s Eve, College Bowls, Super Bowl, Martin Luther King Day Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day, March Madness, Easter Bunny, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Juneteenth, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Santa Claus. These days aren’t about religion. They are a crazy mix of history, sports, celebrations of love, work, leisure, harvest and politics. But—if you know what each of these special days mean, you will have a better understanding of the country you moved to.
Understanding Church Calendar Rhythms
It is like that with the Church Calendar. The special days and seasons of the church calendar as they happen year by year help us to live into the story God is writing in this world he created. It is a coherent and beautiful story. It tells us that life and this world are headed somewhere unimaginably good. And living into the church calendar help us know it is possible to believe that.
Living the Church Calendar, Not Just Learning It
Being told about a holiday is never enough. We need to live it. If you knew nothing about American customs, you could have a new friend tell you about Thanksgiving – but until you were invited into an American family’s home to celebrate it, your knowledge would be theoretical and incomplete. But as you participate in the celebration, the story begins to make sense and you find your place in it.
We need help to hang on to the most important story of all and the church calendar guides us day by day, season by season through the story God is writing in this world. We participate in the prayers and the stories from Scripture, the celebrations and the laments in a week by week pattern. For Christian people through the centuries the weeks were counted out in this pattern: Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Holy week, Easter, Pentecost, Ordinary Time, Christ the King Sunday then back to Advent.
Centuries ago, the poet turned Anglican preacher John Donne wrote “all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.” As we live into the church calendar the truth of those words goes deep into our bones. May you find his mercy in all occasions and seasons.
Sally Breedlove is an author and the co-founder of JourneyMates, a Christian soul care and spiritual formation ministry. She serves as a spiritual director and retreat leader on many occasions and the associate director of Selah-Anglican, Leadership Transformation’s program for training spiritual directors. With her husband, Steve, a bishop in the Anglican Church in North America, she has ministered broadly across the United States, in Canada, and overseas. She is a mother to five and a grandmother to sixteen. She lives in Chapel Hill, NC.
She is also one of the co-authors behind Eighth Day Prayers: Volume 1: Daily Hope for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany and the latest Eighth Day Prayers: Volume 2: Daily Mercy for Lent and Eastertide (Forefront Books). See more at: https://eighthdayprayer.org
