Christian Holidays

Holiday Parties! Holidays are special occasions to share with family and friends. Family customs add meaning to your holiday parties. Planning and entertaining are easy with our selection of paper goods, party accents and decorations Set the scene with the latest in "Scene Setter" decorations!

Advent
Advent is the beginning of the Church Year for most churches in the Western tradition. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, which is the Sunday nearest November 30, and ends on Christmas Eve (Dec 24). If Christmas Eve is a Sunday, it is counted as the fourth Sunday of Advent, with Christmas Eve proper beginning at sundown.

All Saints' Day
Solemnity celebrated on the first of November. It is instituted to honor all the saints, known and unknown, and, according to Urban IV, to supply any deficiencies in the faithful celebration of saints' feasts during the year.

All Souls' Day
The commemoration of all the faithful departed is celebrated by the Church on 2 November, or, if this be a Sunday or a solemnity, on 3 November. The Office of the Dead must be recited by the clergy and all the Masses are to be of Requiem, except one of the current feast, where this is of obligation.

Blessing of the Fleet
The Blessing of the Fishing Fleet is a well-established religious and civic tradition in the City of Fremantle. It is a reminder of the religious traditions of the Italian people, especially those from Molfetta and Capo d'Orlando.

Christmas
The word Christmas comes from the words Cristes maesse, or "Christ's Mass." Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus for members of the Christian religion. Most historians peg the first celebration of Christmas to Rome in 336 A.D.
Christmas is both a holiday and a holy day. In America it is one of the biggest event of the year (especially for kids), and for members of the Christian religions it is an important day on the religious calendar.
Divine Mercy Sunday
During the course of Jesus' revelations to Saint Faustina on the Divine Mercy He asked on numerous occasions that a feast day be dedicated to the Divine Mercy and that this feast be celebrated on the Sunday after Easter.

Easter
Every year as Easter approaches, the stores are filled with jelly beans, candy eggs, egg-coloring kits, stuffed, real and chocolate bunnies of all types, and baskets for carrying all of this Easter bounty. However, most of us know that Easter isn't simply a commercial spring festival about dyeing and hiding eggs or wearing new spring attire. Easter is the Christian observance of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his resurrection days later. It is the central festival of the Christian church and, after the Sabbath, it is the oldest Christian observance.

Epiphany
As its name suggests, the Epiphany had its origin in the Eastern Church. There exists indeed a homily of Hippolytus to which (in one manuscript only) is affixed the lemma ieis ta hagia theophaneia [not epiphaneia: Kellner]; it is throughout addressed to one about to be baptized, and deals only with the Sacrament of Baptism.

Feast Days
The holy days of the Russian Orthodox Church are divided into two categories: the major or great feast days that commemorate events in the lives of Christ and the Theotokos; and holy days that commemorate the various events in the lives of the saints.

Lent
Some of the Fathers as early as the fifth century supported the view that this forty days' fast was of Apostolic institution. For example, St. Leo (d. 461) exhorts his hearers to abstain that they may "fulfill with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the forty days" — ut apostolica institutio quadraginta dierum jejuniis impleatur (P.L., LIV, 633), and the historian Socrates (d. 433) and St. Jerome (d. 420) use similar language (P.G., LXVII, 633; P.L., XXII, 475).

Palm Sunday
The sixth and last Sunday of Lent and beginning of Holy Week, a Sunday of the highest rank, not even a commemoration of any kind being permitted in the Mass. In common law it fixes the commencement of Easter duty.

Pancake Week
Russian holiday "Maslenitsa", or the Pancake Week, which lasted from February 16 till February 22. As you can guess from the name of the holiday, during this week people cook and eat a lot of pancakes (in Russian - blini).

Pentecost
A feast of the universal Church which commemorates the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ, on the ancient Jewish festival called the "feast of weeks" or Pentecost (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10). Whitsunday is so called from the white garments which were worn by those who were baptized during the vigil; Pentecost ("Pfingsten" in German), is the Greek for "the fiftieth" (day after Easter).

Shrove Tuesday
Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday," has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the "last hurrah" before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That's why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of street sweepers pushing the crowds out of the French Quarter towards home.
What is less known about Mardi Gras is its relation to the Christmas season, through the ordinary-time interlude known in many Catholic cultures as Carnival. (Ordinary time, in the Christian calendar, refers to the normal "ordering" of time outside of the Advent/Christmas or Lent/Easter seasons.

Trinity Sunday
The first Sunday after Pentecost, instituted to honor the Most Holy Trinity.

World Youth Day (WYD)
World Youth Day (WYD) is an annual gathering of Catholic young people, created by Pope John Paul II in 1984 "to consolidate the ordinary youth ministry by offering new encouragement for commitment, objectives which foster ever greater involvement and participation" (Letter from Pope John Paul II - Seminar on WYD 1996). It is celebrated on a diocesan level annually, and at a week-long international level every two to three years at different locations, attracting hundreds of thousands of youths from almost every country on the planet. It is a major part of the upsurge in Catholic Youth Work over recent years.

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