Church Year Calendar

The Church tracks time according to the life of Christ: his Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection being the chief markers of time during the year. The seasons of Advent and Lent anticipate these great feasts, while the seasons of Epiphany and Trinity flow from them. The Church Year is a wonderful way of associating the very concept of “time” with Christ, who in the fullness of time was made man.

And yet when it comes to tracking time in the home, many of our calendars highlight the beginning of Spring, or Earth Day, or Ramadan, or Yom Kippur, or April Fools Day, interspersing the occasional Christian holiday, which, as far as secular calendars are concerned, is on par with Arbor Day.

Several years ago I began making a Church Year Calendar, which has the circular calendar of the Church Year on the top page and a regular Roman calendar on the bottom page, the two being color-coordinated with each other. The goal of such a calendar is to unify the tracking of time in the home with the tracking of time in the Church.

The circular calendar probably needs the most explanation. There are 52 spokes of the circular calendar, corresponding to the weeks of the year. There are also seven concentric circles for the days of the week. The outer circle is Sundays, the next one in is Mondays, etc. The first week in Advent is at 12:00 (thinking of the calendar like a clock). The First Sunday in Advent is the topmost violet square, Monday in Advent 1 is the next square in from there, Saturday is the innermost square in that spoke. Then the Second Sunday in Advent begins the outermost square of the second spoke (moving clockwise). Continuing around, one can readily see the rest of Advent, the Christmas Season, the Epiphany season, Transfiguration, the Gesima Season, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and the Trinity season.

In the picture, the calendar is open to September 2018. The week of September 2-8 is the spoke at 9:00 on the circular calendar, which is completely green. Moving clockwise, we come to the week of September 9-15, which has Holy Cross Day in Red on Friday, September 14th. The next week is September 16-22, which has the Feast of St. Matthew on Friday in red. Next, we see the week of September 23-29, in which we find on the circular calendar (still moving clockwise) a white Saturday, and consulting the lower calendar we find that this is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.

This calendar is keyed to the Historic Lectionary and covers September 2018 through December 2019. Thus it covers the school year for students, the Church Year for congregations, and the calendar year for families. The lower Roman calendar gives the names of each Sunday and the names of the feasts and festivals, as well as certain other days of note that people rightly expect from calendars, such as Daylight Saving Time and Mother’s Day.

The electronic files for the calendar are freely available:

Circular Church Year Calendar A+D 2017-18

Circular Church Year Calendar A+D 2018-19

Fully-Formatted Calendar for September 2018-December 2019

This year I have also made the calendar available through Lulu for cost of printing: go to Lulu page. A hard copy costs $10.79, and comes spiral bound and printed in full color on sturdy paper. If you choose to order a copy through Lulu, try coupon codes FWD15 (15% off) or LULU10 (10% off), or whatever other coupon codes Lulu might suggest. Allow three weeks for printing and delivery, as Lulu is a print-on-demand service.

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