Customs and Traditions of the Liturgical Year
Customs and Traditions of the Liturgical Year are the household and parish customs that help a family keep the Prayer Book year at home, without adding doctrines the Prayer Book does not teach.
The Anglican measure
Anglican worship is the Daily Office as the daily work of the whole Church, the Holy Communion as the Lord's Supper appointed by Christ, bishops in historic succession, and the Book of Common Prayer (1928) as the rule of public worship.
Its doctrinal measure is Scripture as the sole rule of faith and practice, the Creeds, and the Thirty-nine Articles. That measure decides what is kept, adapted, or left out below:
- Saints are commemorated, thanked for, and held up as examples. They are not invoked as mediators, and no prayer is addressed to them. The Reformers kept the Magnificat and all scriptural praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and removed petitions directed to her.
- There is no doctrine of purgatory, no indulgence, and no treasury of merits to be gained by a devotion. Prayer for the departed belongs to the Burial Office and to comfort for the bereaved, not to a system for shortening punishment after death.
- The Lord's Supper is received, not adored apart from reception, and not offered anew as a sacrifice for sin. Customs that turn a feast into adoration of the reserved Sacrament, or a procession of the Sacrament for adoration, are therefore left out.
- There are no holy days of obligation in the Roman sense, that is, days whose omission is itself a sin. The Prayer Book appoints holy days and fasts to be observed; keeping them is a matter of ordered devotion, not of a penal obligation.
- Domestic customs — a wreath, a tree, a crèche, a house blessing, food for a fast or a feast — are customs, not rules. No family keeps them all, and none of them is required for a good observance of the day.
How to use these pages
Keep the Sundays, the Prayer Book holy days, and the Prayer Book fasts first. Then choose, for each household, the feasts of saints and the domestic customs that fit its members, its patron saints, and its circumstances. A custom is kept well when it sends a family back to Scripture, to the Collect of the day, and to the Daily Office, rather than replacing them.
The seasons follow the Prayer Book year: Advent, Christmastide, Epiphanytide, Septuagesima, Lent, Eastertide, and the Time after Pentecost, commonly called Trinity season. Each season page gives the Prayer Book shape of the season first, then the domestic customs that belong to it, in date order.
Season index
- Advent — the four Sundays before Christmas; preparation for both the coming of Christ in the flesh and his coming again in glory. See Advent Customs and Traditions.
- Christmastide — Christmas Day through the Epiphany; the twelve days, the Holy Innocents, and the Circumcision, now kept as the Holy Name.
- Epiphanytide — the Epiphany and the Sundays following; the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, his Baptism, and his first signs.
- Septuagesima — the three Sundays before Lent; a preparation for the fast, including Candlemas, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
- Lent — Ash Wednesday through Holy Week; fasting, penitence, and the Passion, with the Ember Days and the Rogation Days in their seasons. See Rogation Days.
- Eastertide — Easter Day through Pentecost; the Resurrection, the Rogation Days, the Ascension, and Whitsunday.
- Time after Pentecost — Trinity Sunday through the Sunday before Advent; Trinity, the Transfiguration, Michaelmas, All Saints, and the Sundays after Trinity.
For the Prayer Book calendar itself, see Saints and Holy Days.
What is kept, adapted, or left out
The table below states the editorial rule for the whole series, so that a reader can see why a familiar Fisheaters entry does or does not appear.
Kept, as Prayer Book or historic Anglican custom: Advent wreath and candles; Jesse Tree; Nativity scene; Advent calendars as a teaching aid for children; St. Nicholas Day (December 6) as the commemoration of a bishop known for charity; St. Lucy (December 13) and the Advent Ember Days; the O Antiphons at Evening Prayer (December 17–23); Candlemas as the Presentation; Shrovetide as preparation for Lent; Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, and Easter customs; Rogation processions and prayers for the fruits of the earth; Ember Days in all four seasons; Michaelmas (September 29) and All Saints (November 1) as commemorations.
Adapted, with the Roman devotion removed: Marian feasts that stand in the historic Prayer Book calendar — the Purification (February 2), the Annunciation (March 25), and the Conception (December 8) — are kept as feasts concerning Christ and his mother as Scripture presents her, without the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) or the Assumption (1950) and without petition to her. House blessings, such as the chalking of doors at Epiphany, are kept as a prayer to God for the household, not as an invocation of saints. A nine-day course of prayer is kept as prayer to God alone. All Souls (November 2) is adapted as remembrance of the departed and prayer for the bereaved, not as intercession for souls in purgatory.
Left out: Apparition devotions that rest on post-Reformation private revelation, such as Lourdes, Guadalupe as a devotion, and Pompeii; First Fridays and First Saturdays as promised devotions; the Sacred Heart and Corpus Christi as devotions involving adoration apart from reception; indulgences, including the Portiuncula indulgence; and collections or devotions that belong to Roman jurisdiction, such as Peter's Pence. Where a Fisheaters entry is a purely local or national custom of another country, it is noted as such rather than presented as an Anglican custom.