Presbyterians have been gradually recovering the Christian year and most congregations now observe at least Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. Observance frequently takes the form of family-centered activities, study programs, and a wide variety of artistic and cultural expressions.
In the tradition of John Calvin, today’s Presbyterians honor the weekly celebration of the resurrection of our Lord as the greatest of Christian festivals. For centuries, on the other hand, they have frowned on Christmas, Easter, and other traditional church festivals because of possible pagan origins. Slowly, we have begun recovering the Christian year. One probably can safely say that every Presbyterian congregation keeps Christmas and Easter. (It remains true, however, that in many congregations the decision to place a Christmas tree in the sanctuary will create controversy.)
Most Presbyterian congregations further observe Advent and Lent as seasons of intentional spiritual preparation for the major festivals. And every year, more churches put out red paraments and bright banners to celebrate Pentecost or Christ the King. Beyond these special times, the Presbyterian Planning Calendar lists also Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord, the Transfiguration of the Lord, Passion/Palm Sunday, Trinity Sunday, and All Saints’ Day.
The planning calendar is a helpful resource for congregations who are moving into the rhythms of the church year. It provides essays about the church year, a calendar of the liturgical colors, lists of liturgical seasons important to other faiths, and suggests ways to make each season meaningful in worship or in study.
Music and the Arts
With our tradition of congregational singing, Presbyterians think first of festivals of song to celebrate high points of the Christian year. What congregation doesn’t plan for a special music service at Christmas and at Easter? The greater challenge is to bring the integrity of proclamation into these almost mandatory music fests. At a time when people otherwise inactive in the church gather to hear the “holiday” music, worship leaders strive to make sure the good news of Christ is proclaimed clearly and in fullness.
Consequently, musical services at Christmas and Easter increasingly involve both Word and sacrament. The offering of the Lord’s Supper, “the joyful feast of the kingdom,” is coming to be regarding as especially appropriate when remembering the Incarnation and Resurrection. Some congregations on Christmas Eve combine passing the elements of the Supper with the traditional sharing of the light so that the act of candle lighting becomes a renewal of commitment, a further response to the Word proclaimed.
These highest of our holy times invite all the arts to enter the celebration of worship: banners, flowers, greenery, candles, paraments, vestments, pageants, drama, choral readings, and liturgical dance. These traditional expressions of festive faith and awe also give an opportunity for people less often involved in worship to bring an offering of talents. Pentecost, celebrating the Creator Spirit, is an especially happy time for a festival of the arts spilling over into a climactic hour of creative worship.
Family Activities
Because seasonal festivals of the church are often family-centered, such celebrations as caroling, the hanging of the greens, and of course Advent workshops invite intergenerational involvement in worship. During Holy Week, a Seder feast climaxing in a Maundy Thursday celebration or a well-paced Tenebrae service can bring all ages into a shared experience.
At least one congregation uses Advent as an occasion to help families learn how to do household worship. After a brief worship time informed by the Advent theme, teaching and role-play give the goals and possible methods for family worship. Then each family or household forms into a small group, using suggested guidelines to rehearse worship together before the closing carol.
Our congregation finds it important to create “extended” families or households through this event, so that single people are not excluded, but rather embraced. Most worship planners, aware that many of the seasons of the church year coincide with secular holidays, use pastoral sensitivity in seeking worship designs that will draw in those living in nontraditional families, or away from home, or who otherwise might feel in some way more isolated by the family-focused expectations of the season.
In celebrating the seasons of the church year, we also draw upon the rich diversity of cultural traditions represented in our denomination. Nine days before Christmas, Hispanic Presbyterians invite the infant Jesus to find a place in their home in the fiesta of Las Posadas. African-American Presbyterians frequently deepen their Christmas celebrations with the observance of Kwanza, with its focus on heritage and on family unity in the context of faith. The Presbyterian Hymnal, arranged to follow the church year, celebrates our diversity by including seasonal hymns and carols from Native American, Chinese, Japanese, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and African-American sources.
Worship and Education
Being “people of the Word,” Presbyterians tend to bring study into any celebration of the church year. Advent and Lent, as seasons of preparation, find many congregations sponsoring events that combine worship and education. Sometimes these take the form of lecture/worship series built around topics illuminating historical or theological understandings of the seasonal celebration. Sometimes the themes involve spirituality and devotional disciplines.
It is traditional for confirmation/commissioning classes or Communion preparation classes to choose Lent as a time for the spiritual discipline of study. But an increasing number of congregations call adults to learn about the worship dimensions of marriage, baptism, or funerals by studying Supplementary Liturgical Resources appropriate for Advent or for Lent. The study guides for The Directory of Worship also lend themselves to this sort of worship/learning experience.
As our public worship is more and more shaped by the seasons of the church year, Presbyterians are also drawn into that same pattern in household worship as well as in personal disciplines of prayer and meditation. In fact, it is through these shared rhythms of worship that thoughtful believers are discovering a crucial insight into the meaning of communal worship. Bound together into one community of faith as we are, Presbyterians are coming to see that our personal and our household times of worship are not separate from, but rather join with, the worship of our particular congregation, our denomination, and the church throughout the world as all together move in the rhythm of a shared sense of ordinary and of sacred time.