Evangelical Feast Days

Finding middle ground in the liturgical calendar wars.

As many of our American denominations are losing their unique expressions of theology and tradition, individual Christians a set adrift to form our own spiritual practices. The result is often an amalgamation of different traditions (Christian and beyond) with little internal consistency and even less understanding of theological roots and trajectories. In this quintessentially post-modern expression of “build your own religion,” we have become liturgical mutts who pick-and-choose which denominational lineages will suit the needs of the moment. Recent years have seen a particular renewed interest in the liturgical calendar that marks out set days and seasons for remembrance throughout the year. I am often asked, Does your church “do Advent”? Or, “Why don’t you give up anything for Lent?” I confess my responses to these questions are often more snarky than humble, but they do raise legitimate questions worth answering. So what are these holy days all about, who celebrates which ones, and what do they mean? What follows is my attempt to summarize where we are in American evangelicalism and what middle ground we might find in the church calendar debates.

Holy Days in Scripture

In the Old Testament, time was organized around the weekly sabbath and marked by various annual events, primarily the three feasts that involved pilgrimages to the Holy City. In the New Testament, those days take a backseat to the newly instituted observance of the sabbath on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, in accordance with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week. Paul makes it clear that special “days and months and seasons and years” were part of the old ceremonial laws and therefore are no longer binding on the life or conscience of Christians (Gal 4:10). The pattern of weekly rest and worship in obedience to the fourth commandment is now the only law marking time for the people of God.

The Development of the Church Calendar

Despite this restriction on setting up binding holy days, in the early centuries, a so-called church calendar developed to “keep sacred time.” It took centuries for this calendar to develop, and it seems unlikely that the apostolic church celebrated any of the special days or seasons.¹ As the church grew and spread around the world, different regions and traditions developed their own unique liturgical calendars. The Roman Catholic version is probably the one American evangelicals are most used to seeing, marked by the two main “seasons” of Advent and Lent.

Amongst Protestants, the liturgical calendar continues to be followed by those denominations holding to (or most influenced by) The Book of Common Prayer. Originally written in 1549 as a guiding document for the Church of England during and after the Reformation, the BCP has gone through numerous adaptations by Anglicans, Episcopalians, and others. The BCP stipulates that “The Church Year consists of two cycles of feasts and holy days: one is dependent upon the movable date of the Sunday of the Resurrection or Easter Day; the other, upon the fixed date of December 25, the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity or Christmas Day.” From these two days, the sequence of the church year takes shape with a list of the rest of the holy days to be regularly observed.

The Rejection of the Church Calendar

The High-Church tradition of the church calendar was one strand of worship to emerge from the Reformation, but it was not the only one. Many, if not most, of the Reformers cast off all man-made traditions of worship and instead returned to the Scriptures as their only guide. This strand of the reformed tradition holds to the regulative principle of worship, defined in the Westminster Confession of Faith: “the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and is so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of man, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scriptures.” (WCF 21.1) In other words, while the Book of Common Prayer allows any form of worship not condemned in God’s word, the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition restricts worship to only those elements prescribed in Scripture. And since none of the holy days are prescribed in Scripture, the Reformed church has traditionally not followed them. This approach is best summarized by Hughes Old: “One thing should be clear, the primary emphasis of any Reformed liturgical calendar should be the weekly observance of the Lord’s Day. The celebration of the resurrection is primarily the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Day, not the yearly celebration, which in certain parts of the world is connected with spring.”²

This somewhat tongue-in-cheek chart summarizes the “Presbyterian Holy Days”:

Any Middle Ground?

So, where does this leave us when it comes to Christmas and Easter? Well, it is complicated! If the Protestant approach to worship can be divided into two strands (free vs. regulated worship), then those who follow the regulative principle can be further divided into two more strands. On the one hand are the Reformed Presbyterians who do not celebrate any special days, including Christmas and Easter, and instead focus on the beautifully simple worship of God week-by-week on his holy day.

On the other hand, there are those who reject most of the set times in the liturgical calendar, but who exercise freedom in Christ by celebrating certain select days. Terry Johnson articulates this strand:

“While many will perhaps not want to go so far in completely rejecting the church year as the Scottish Presbyterians and Puritans (of whom it was said, they worked in their fields on Christmas day in order to witness to their Catholic neighbors), Reformed churches would do well to follow the example of the Continental Reformed churches in limiting their church year to what has been called the “five evangelical feast days”: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. In this way, the high points of the Gospel message would be commemorated in Reformed churches annually, along with most of Christendom, without becoming entangled in the full calendar cycle.”³

Daniel Hyde argues for this middle ground in the Reformed understanding of worship by referring to the “evangelical feast days” as “not holy but helpful.”⁴ We should never be bound to them nor prescribe their use, but we are free to observe them wisely and in moderation. Two arguments for this practice are particularly compelling. First, he argues that “celebrating these redemptive events as churches unites us to the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” (Nicene Creed), while keeping us free from the entanglements of a full-blown liturgical calendar.” Second, they serve the purpose of evangelism: “Finally, Advent/Christmas and Easter especially provide an opportunity for the church to engage in evangelism. Since in the United States, these times of the year are cultural "holidays," we have a built-in opportunity to speak the truth of the Word into the hearts and minds of those who are already thinking about those days.” We still have two times per year when our neighbors are thinking about Christianity, and the evangelical feast days take advantage of this to draw attention to Christ and his gospel, if only for a few hours.

Full calendar, no calendar, or a select calendar, American evangelicals find themselves on every part of this spectrum. Most of us probably cannot help it that we are liturgical mutts with differing (and even unknown) lineages, so we would do well to extend charity and grace to those who differ. So wherever you are, own your tradition, and follow it to the arms of your Savior.

1. https://reformedforum.org/the-origin-of-the-church-calendar/

2. “Worship That Is Reformed According to the Scriptures” by Hughes Old

3. “Leading in Worship” by Terry Johnson

4. http://www.reformationocconference.com/refoc-blog/not-holy-but-helpful-thoughts-on-the-church-calendar