Let's back up a bit.
I had never really thought much about the church calendar, besides Easter (sometime in April) and Christmas (December 25), which I've celebrated since I was a little girl, being brought up in the church. But what was the church calendar, anyway? I had never heard of that.
In the last 15 years or so, I had begun to incorporate Lent and Advent 'lite' into our family celebrations. At Christmas time we followed an advent calendar, but I never really connected it with the greater church year. Had I been missing something important all these years? The churches I have attended over the years didn't really follow the church year. One of our former pastors did offer Lent ideas and lit the Advent Candles in the month of December. I'm very grateful for that, and it did help to fan the flame of my interest in the liturgical year.
The cyclical, circular nature of the church year provides us with repeated opportunities to live out various aspects of our faith, to see life through the lens of the Christ-story and to deepen our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The church year has seasons of darkness, of light, of sorrow, of rejoicing, of just getting through. Our lives have such seasons too. By incorporating these experiences, the church year hallows them, reminding us that all time is sacred because God is present in it.
Ireton, Kimberlee Conway. The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (Kindle Locations 89-92). Mason Lewis Press. Kindle Edition.
The church calendar begins with Advent (which leads up to Christmas), and now we are officially in Epiphany! Epiphany lasts 12 days, from Dec 26 to January 6th.
And those days are the actual 12 Days of Christmas.
And here is a link to a great rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas, the song we know and love.
Do you follow the seasons of the church year?
