Liturgical Colours of the Church Calendar

(As described in the United Church calendar)

Blue or purple - Advent
White - Christmas Eve through Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Transfiguration Sunday, Easter season, Trinity Sunday
Green Ordinary Time:  Seasons of Epiphany and Pentecost, excluding Day of Pentecost

Purple or black - Ash Wednesday
Purple - Lent
Purple or red - Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday
Black - Good Friday  and Holy Saturday
Red - Day of Pentecost
Orange - Creation Time
White or red - All Saints Day
White - Reign of Christ Sunday

Church Seasons

Advent, the season of anticipation and hope, is the beginning of the Church Year for most churches in the Western tradition. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, which is the Sunday nearest November 30, and ends on Christmas Eve (Dec 24).

Advent:  (Blue or Purple)

Christmas Season in most Western church traditions begins at sunset on Christmas Eve, December 24, and lasts through January 5. Since this time includes 12 days, the season of Christmas is known in many places as the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Christmas:  (White)

In western Christian tradition, January 6 is celebrated as Epiphany. The term epiphany means "to show" or "to make known" or even "to reveal." In Western churches, it remembers the coming of the wise men bringing gifts to visit the Christ child, who by so doing "reveal" Jesus to the world as Lord and King.

Epiphany: (Green)

Lent is marked by a time of introspection, self-examination, repentance and prayer in preparation to celebrate Easter. The colour used in the sanctuary for most of Lent is purple, symbolizing both the pain and suffering leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus as well as the suffering of humanity and the world under sin. But purple is also the color of royalty, and so anticipates through the suffering and death of Jesus the coming resurrection and hope of newness that will be celebrated in the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Lent:  (Purple)

Ash Wednesday:  (Purple or Black)

Many Christians in Canada mark Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent. It is the beginning of the Lenten fast and is the day after Shrove Tuesday.

Many churches in Canada hold special Ash Wednesday services for their congregations. It is a time when people who seek penitence for their wrongdoings are marked with the sign of the cross, from blessed ashes, on their forehead. This symbolic occasion reminds people of their mortality and sorrow for sins, as well as the will for change and the hope of forgiveness.

Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, is the first day of Lent in Western Christianity. It occurs 46 days (40 weekdays plus 6 Sundays) before Easter and can fall as early as 4 February or as late as 10 March. 
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​​According to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert, where he endured temptation  by Satan. Lent originated as a mirroring of this, fasting 40 days as preparation for Easter. Every Sunday was seen as a commemoration of the Sunday of Christ's resurrection and so as a feast day on which

fasting was inappropriate. Accordingly, Christians fasted from Monday to Saturday (6 days) during 6 weeks and from Wednesday to Saturday (4 days) in the preceding week, thus making up the number of 40 days.

Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of blessing ashes made from palm branches blessed on the previous year Palm Sunday, and placing them on the heads of participants to the accompaniment of the words "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" or "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return".

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Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday (Purple or Red)

Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in all four canonical Gospels.

In many Christian churches, Palm Sunday includes a procession of the assembled worshipers carrying palms, representing the palm branches the crowd scattered in front of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem.

Good Friday and Holy Saturday (Black)

Good Friday is a religious holiday, observed primarily by Christians, commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of Passover. 

Holy Saturday is the Saturday of Holy Week and is the day after Good Friday. It is the day before Easter and the last day of Holy Week in which Christians prepare for Easter. It commemorates the day that Jesus Christ's body lay in the tomb.

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Easter:  (White)

Easter Sunday is the day of the year when the Christian Church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus the Christ from the dead. Easter lies at the heart of our faith as the central moment of the liturgical year. The early church saw Christ’s resurrection as the central witness to a new act of God in history proclaiming victory over the Cross – love as stronger than death.

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The Season of Easter, like Christmas, is a period of time rather than just a day. It is actually a seven-week season of the church year called Eastertide, the Great Fifty Days that begins at sundown the evening before Easter Sunday when we celebrate the Easter Vigil and lasts for six more Sundays until Pentecost Sunday. Even in churches that traditionally do not observe the other historic seasons of the church year, Easter has occupied a central place as the high point of Christian worship. Easter marks the central faith confession of the early church and has been the focal point for Christian worship, observed on the first day of each week Sunday, since the first century. Sunday was officially proclaimed the day of Christian worship in AD 321.

The Sanctuary colors for Easter Sunday and the Sundays of Easter, including Ascension Day, are white and gold, the colors of sacred days throughout the church year. 

For the Easter season, white symbolizes the hope of the resurrection, as well as the purity and newness that comes from victory over the Cross. The gold symbolizes the light of the world brought by the risen Christ. 

Color used in worship is especially important during the season of Easter. The changing colors of the sanctuary from the purple of Lent to the black of Good Friday provide graphic visual symbols for the moving forward of the Lenten journey.  The change of colors for Easter and the following Sundays helps communicate the movement of sacred time as well as personal faith journeys from penitence and reflection to celebration and joy.

Prior to the fourth century, Christians observed Pascha, Christian Passover. Pascha was a festival of redemption, adapted from Jewish Passover and commemorated both the crucifixion

and resurrection of Jesus as the vehicle for God’s grace. By the fourth century, with an increasing emphasis on Holy Week and Good Friday commemorating Jesus’ passion, crucifixion and death, Easter moved into a distinctively Christian celebration of the Resurrection.

Easter, like Passover, is a movable feast. The date of Easter, is not fixed but is determined by a system based on a lunar calendar adapted from a formula decided by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring equinox (the day when the sun’s ecliptic or apparent path in the sky crosses the equator, thus making days and nights of equal length). This usually occurs on March 21, which means the date of Easter can range between March 22 and April 25 depending on the lunar cycle.

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Day of Pentecost: (Red)

Pentecost was originally an Old Testament festival, since the time of Josephus calculated as beginning on the fiftieth day after the beginning of Passover. In the Christian calendar, it falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter. It was called the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), and in the Old Testament was originally an agricultural festival celebrating and giving thanks for the "first fruits" of the early spring harvest (Lev 23, Exod 23, 34).

By the early New Testament period, it had gradually lost its association with agriculture and became associated with the celebration of the creation of God’s people and their religious   history.    By   the  destruction   of  Jerusalem in  AD  70, the  festival   focused

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exclusively on God’s gracious gift of Torah (the "Law") on Mount Sinai. It continues to be celebrated in this manner in modern Judaism.

The word pentecost means "fiftieth
day.”  In most Christian traditions, Pentecost Sunday occurs 50 days following Easter Sunday (counting Easter Sunday since it is the first day of the week).  Those 50 days span seven Sundays after Easter, so Pentecost is the seventh Sunday after Easter (7 weeks times 7 days = 49  days, plus  Pentecost   Sunday). Since Easter is a “movable feast,” meaning that it occurs on different days in different years (it is tied to the lunar cycle while the calendar is solar   based),    Pentecost   is    also

moveable.  It can occur as early as May 10 and as late as June 13 (see The Church Year for current dates).  Some Christian traditions, Eastern Orthodox for example, use a different religious calendar and so have different dates for much of the Christian Year.

The sanctuary color for Pentecost Sunday is red, the color of the church.  Technically, red is used only for the Sunday of Pentecost, although some churches use red for the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost Sunday. The red symbolizes both the fire of Pentecost as well as the apostles and early followers of Jesus, who were gathered in  the Upper  Room 

for the empowerment from God to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world.

For Christians, Pentecost Sunday is a day to celebrate hope, a hope evoked by the knowledge that God, through the Holy Spirit is at work among God's people. It is a celebration of newness, of recreation, of renewal of purpose, mission, and calling as God’s people. It is a celebration of God’s ongoing work in the world. Yet, it is also a recognition that God's work is done through God's people as the Holy Spirit pours God's grace upon them.

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Ordinary Time:  (Green)

Ordinary Time refers to a season of the Christian liturgical calendar.  Ordinary Time is celebrated in two segments: from the Monday following the Baptism of Our Lord up to Ash Wednesday; and from Pentecost Monday to the First Sunday of Advent. This makes it the largest season of the Liturgical Year.

The Church numbers the weeks of Ordinary Time. Several Sundays bear the name of feasts or solemnities celebrated on those days, including Trinity Sunday and the Feast of Christ the King.

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