A Tale of Two Calendars
December 10, 2024 | By Gavin Susantio YDS ‘25
image description: bowl and leaves
Indonesia (my home country) is a country without seasons. Technically, there are two seasons—dry and rainy. But it might be dry or rainy at any given period of time. Indonesia is located by the equator, so much so that the sun sets and rises at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. respectively, everyday. I can tell the hour of day just by looking at the sun. The leaves are green all year round, and, in our history, there has never been a need to hoard food before winter and harvest as much as one can during spring.
I’m a first-year student at Yale, and now I face an altogether different way of living—my closet has increased fourfold as a result. There is a set of clothing for every season, and so my closet has both expanded and divided. I never had this problem before, but it’s just part of living life by the seasons.
It took me a while to really appreciate this varying of the seasons. It wasn’t until I became a student of tea that I did. I study chado, or “The Way of Tea,” which revolves around serving a Japanese green tea called matcha. Its intricate, meditative, and aesthetically pleasing rituals attest to its enduring legacy as the oldest tea practice still observed today. In my formal training as a matcha student, I had to learn how to arrange my tea utensils (the tea bowl, water ladle, metal kettle, etc.) based on the seasons. For instance, during the warmer seasons, one would need to place the tea kettle farther from the guest, while during the colder seasons, closer to the guest. One would need to choose utensil designs and arrange a flower display based on the seasons. A famous instance of a flower arrangement is a tea master’s juxtaposing a white, frail flower with a red, vibrant flower during the end of the calendar year, marking death and new life. [1]
Much like chado, moving from one city on the equator to another city in the northeast takes many considerations and is quite the work. Going from living in one place without seasons—to another with many seasons—is living life by a completely different calendar. This idea of entering multiple calendars is seen as a given in one’s spiritual life. St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest theologians in Western history, maintains that there are two cities: the City of Man and the City of God. [2] Accordingly, both cities function under different calendars that involve distinctive seasons that color the world and guide our day-to-day life. Just as we have natural seasons, Christians have liturgical seasons.
Are the seasons integral to human life, and if so, why? And why, in particular, are liturgical seasons integral to Christian life?
Liturgy can mean “the work of the people” but also “the worship of the divine,” with the life of Christ serving as the content for the liturgical seasons that form the basis of the spiritual disciplines and public worship of the Church.
Whether we know it or not, whether we are Christian or not, we are living in a clash of calendars: the academic calendar, the liturgical calendar, the “secular” calendar, the Gregorian calendar, etc. Each calendar marks the beginning and end of different seasons throughout the year. There are seasons for festivities (such as Halloween and Santa-centered Christmas) in the secular calendar, for exams and long holidays in the academic calendar, for Lent and Advent in the liturgical calendar. Each is meant to prepare us and immerse us in a particular way of living in allocated times. In the liturgical calendar in particular, there are about six liturgical seasons:
Advent - 4 weeks in anticipation of the nativity, beginning the Sunday nearest to November 30
Christmas - Remembrance of the nativity, beginning December 25 until the Sunday after January 6
Ordinary Time after Epiphany - 4-8 weeks
Lent - 40 days (excluding Sundays) in anticipation of the resurrection, beginning on Ash Wednesday until Holy Saturday
Easter - 50-day celebration of the resurrection, concluding on Pentecost Sunday
Ordinary Time after Pentecost - 6 months
Our focus in this article are the natural and liturgical seasons. Sometimes, the rhythms of Earth align with the story of God. Take Advent with the dormancy of winter and Easter with the vibrancy of spring; both kinds of seasons are externally-imposing, and they are communally-uniting. However, the liturgical calendar does more than the Gregorian calendar. It imposes the narrative of God and unites the entirety of the world (beyond the impositions of natural seasons). One is based on the seasons, the other is based on a Person. That is, the liturgical calendar is based on the story of God and communicates the patterns of Man. For instance, in Lent, we traditionally fast for 40 days because Christ fasted for 40 days.
In fact, the Julian calendar was revised into the Gregorian calendar to keep the natural and liturgical seasons in line. It was important for Christians that Easter would continue to occur during the Spring Equinox, since Spring marks vitality and rebirth after the long and cold winter. Let winter be the season of repentance (Lent) and spring be the season of resurrection (Easter). While not all countries experience the four natural seasons, all countries experience the major liturgical seasons.
My experience of transitioning from living in Asia to America also mirrors my transition towards living under this liturgical calendar.
In the natural seasons, I faced another new problem: seasonal depression is imposed on us yet it unites us communally like never before. Never in my life had I seen as many people wear many layers of clothing nor invite me over for tea. But I also encountered new joys: watching snowfall for the first time and seeing tens of snow sculptures on campus. The season is externally-imposing and communally-uniting in that it creates a 2-3 month-long culture without which we wouldn’t flourish nor even survive.
The same is true with the liturgical seasons: there are months-long traditions that form the Church’s communal culture that imposes spiritual narratives, disciplines, and mindsets that guide Christian flourishing.
A church without the liturgical calendar would be unthinkable in the 2000 years of church history. Imagine if we have no Christmas, Good Friday, nor Easter. And take Lent, the season of fasting, increased prayer and alms-giving, marked by repentance— in the Orthodox Tradition, the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim is recited in every weeknight liturgy, when everyone in the parish or church would prostrate to the ground multiple times. This, by far, has been the favorite sanctifying prayer of many Orthodox Christians. [3] In the Western Tradition (Catholic, Anglican, and the like), parishioners or churchgoers would go around and contemplate on the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, following 14 events in the Passion, [4] which could take up to 45 minutes of meditating on Christ carrying His cross. Hearts become heavy, and examination of conscience becomes natural and universal.
Following the season of repentance is the season of resurrection. At Redeemer Church in La Mirada, CA, I’ve never seen as many people sing and dance for joy after a long fasting season of Lent during Easter Sunday. As I write this article, today was the first day I sat outside for more than 15 minutes this Spring semester, after numerous days of snowstorm in the past two months. I’m awaiting the joy of spring, and Lent is the time we’re awaiting the joy of resurrection.
As Lauren Winner wrote in the Foreword of Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, “I want the Christian story to shape everything I do, even how I reckon time,” as there are many competing stories of what should be most important to us at any given time. This is difficult to do, as “our surrounding society... tells us that the opening day of baseball season, not Easter, is the most important day of spring.” (Or perhaps the soccer season, in my case.) Further, the liturgical calendar or “Christian year consists of more than a sequence of holy days; it contains, in fact, whole seasons of spiritual meaning.” [5]
James K.A. Smith encourages us not to live in a Nowhen Christianity that maintains that “history is profane” and only “eternity is holy,” as this “nullifies history as an arena of God’s action.” God is a God of time and eternity. We cannot escape temporality, and eternity begins today as the seasons calibrate us to inhabit redeemed time.
Redeemed time is sanctified time—infused with meaning derived from God’s actions in the past and God’s promises for the future. And though we are temporal creatures, we are also eternal creatures, by which we already entered eternal life, albeit still distracted by the temporal concerns unavoidable in life.
In this redeemed time, Advent becomes the first day of the year in the liturgical calendar, where we wait for the nativity or the birth of Christ. This makes the possibility to inhabit the story of Christ and reorient ourselves in such a way that what we’re immersed into—among the overlapping calendars (the first semester in the academic calendar, the beginning of autumn in the Gregorian calendar, etc.)—the events in the life of Christ. God’s story becomes the context in which we live out our story. We live in time as storied beings.
While the natural calendar is based on the Cosmos, the liturgical calendar is based on the Logos. That is, it is based on the incarnate Logos or eternal Word of God (who is at the same time God Himself) who entered time; it is based on a divine Person. That Person lived in history or dwelt on earth, and our liturgical calendar revolves around the historical events of His life: the virgin birth in Christmas, His baptism in Epiphany, His fasting in Lent, His death and resurrection in Easter. We continue to remember and celebrate these events in the life of Christ, which are arguably the most important events in human and cosmic history, as they pertain to the salvation of all humanity and the cosmos.
In the book description of Alexander Schmemann’s Celebration of Faith II: The Church Year, it is written:
There is no human society without celebrations, holidays, and feasts. “The feast is part of man’s inescapable rhythm of work and rest,” observes Fr Schmemann. But beyond the need to rest from work, the development of celebrations in human culture has much deeper root in man’s absolutely irrepressible need, not just for rest, but for joy, for meaning that we find the true source of celebration and its tenacity in human society. Feasts, in every culture, have become the repository and expression of a society’s goals, ambitions, and worldview. As Fr. Schmemann writes, “Tell me what you celebrate, and I will tell you who you are.”
Christianity is also best understood through its celebrations rather than through abstract dogmatic and theological formulas. [7]
Even if it’s summer all year in Indonesia, it’s either Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, or Ordinary Time in Indonesia—and around the world for the Christian. We experience the embodiment of the Indonesian motto: Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or Unity in Diversity.
All over the world, people will sing “Joy to the World” on the same day. Joy was born in a lonely manger. Such a story is externally imposing and communally uniting. Joy has come, whether you feel it or not—though Advent would recalibrate our emotions towards Joy. Joy comes to those who are in despair, Joy comes for the life of the world. You might’ve heard that Christ is “the reason for the season”—He is indeed the reason for all the liturgical seasons, the entire liturgical calendar. So, our story becomes submerged and participates in His Story. His life becomes our life. His death becomes our death. And His resurrection becomes our resurrection... Unto the ages of ages.
1. Okakura Kakuzo. The Book of Tea. 1906.
2. Augustine. The City of God. 426 AD.
3. O Lord and Master of my life, give me not
a spirit of sloth, vain curiosity, lust for power, and idle talk.
(Prostrate)
But give to me Thy servant
A spirit of soberness, humility, patience, and love.
(Prostrate)
O Lord and King, grant me to see
My own faults and not to condemn my brother:
For blessed art Thou to the ages of ages. Amen.
(Prostrate)
4. The Passion, which comes from the Latin “to suffer,” is the short time period leading up to the death and burial of Christ, which consisted of Hisagony, trial, flagellation, carrying the cross, etc.
5. Bobby Gross. Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God. 2009.
6. James K. A. Smith. How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now. 2022.
7. Alexander Schmemann. Celebration of Faith, Vol. 2: The Church Year. 2012.