John the Baptist was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early 1st century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist Christian traditions, Saint John by certain Catholic churches, and Prophet Yahya in Islam. He is sometimes alternatively referred to as John the Baptiser.
The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year, ecclesiastical calendar, or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical days and seasons that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be observed, and which portions of scripture are to be read.
Zechariah is a Jewish figure in the New Testament and the Quran, and venerated in Christianity and Islam. In the Bible, he is the father of John the Baptist, a priest of the sons of Aaron in the Gospel of Luke, and the husband of Elizabeth who is a relative of the Virgin Mary.
Midsummer is a celebration of the season of summer, taking place on or near the date of the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; the longest day of the year. The name "midsummer" mainly refers to summer solstice festivals of European origin, especially those in the Nordic countries. In these cultures it is traditionally regarded as the middle of summer, with the season beginning on May Day. Although the summer solstice falls on 21 or 22 June in the Northern Hemisphere, it was traditionally reckoned to fall on 23–24 June in much of Europe. In Christian tradition, these dates coincide with Saint John's Eve and Saint John's Day. It is usually celebrated with outdoor gatherings that include bonfires and feasting.
The nativity of Jesus, nativity of Christ, birth of Jesus or birth of Christ is documented in the biblical gospels of Luke and Matthew. The two accounts agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Judaea, that his mother, Mary, was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was descended from King David and was not his biological father, and that his birth was caused by divine intervention. Some scholars do not see the two canonical gospel nativity stories as historically factual since they present clashing accounts and irreconcilable genealogies. The secular history of the time does not synchronize with the narratives of the birth and early childhood of Jesus in the two gospels. Some view the question of historicity as secondary, given that gospels were primarily written as theological documents rather than chronological timelines.
The Twelve Days of Christmas, also known as the Twelve Days of Christmastide, are the festive Christian season celebrating the Nativity.
Saint John's Eve, starting at sunset on 23 June, is the eve of the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. This is one of the very few feast days marking a saint's birth, rather than their death. The Gospel of Luke states that John was born six months before Jesus; therefore, the feast of John the Baptist was fixed on 24 June, six months before Christmas. In the Roman calendar, 24 June was the date of the summer solstice, and Saint John's Eve is closely associated with Midsummer festivities in Europe. Traditions are similar to those of May Day and include bonfires, feasting, processions, church services, and gathering wild plants.
The Presentation of Jesus is an early episode in the life of Jesus Christ, describing his presentation at the Temple in Jerusalem. It is celebrated by many churches 40 days after Christmas on Candlemas, or the "Feast of the Presentation of Jesus". The episode is described in chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament. Within the account, "Luke's narration of the Presentation in the Temple combines the purification rite with the Jewish ceremony of the redemption of the firstborn ."
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the feast of the death and Resurrection of Jesus, called Pascha (Easter), is the greatest of all holy days and as such it is called the "feast of feasts". Immediately below it in importance, there is a group of Twelve Great Feasts. Together with Pascha, these are the most significant dates on the Orthodox liturgical calendar. Eight of the great feasts are in honor of Jesus Christ, while the other four are dedicated to the Virgin Mary — the Theotokos.
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Nativity of Mary, Marymas or the Birth of the Virgin Mary, refers to a Christian feast day celebrating the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus.
In Christianity, the Visitation, also known as the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, refers to the visit of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus, to Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, in the Gospel of Luke, Luke 1:39–56. The episode is one of the standard scenes shown in cycles of the Life of the Virgin in art, and sometimes in larger cycles of the Life of Christ in art.
The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph. The subject became popular in art from the 1490s on, but veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th century by Saint François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, who founded a confraternity.
The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ is a Christian celebration of the circumcision of Jesus in accordance with Jewish tradition, eight days after his birth, the occasion on which the child was formally given his name.
In Christian liturgy, a vigil is, in origin, a religious service held during the night leading to a Sunday or other feastday. The Latin term vigilia, from which the word is derived meant a watch night, not necessarily in a military context, and generally reckoned as a fourth part of the night from sunset to sunrise. The four watches or vigils were of varying length in line with the seasonal variation of the length of the night.
This article lists the feast days of the General Roman Calendar as they were at the end of 1954. It is essentially the same calendar established by Pope Pius X (1903–1914) following his liturgical reforms, but it also incorporates changes that were made by Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), such as the institution of the Feast of Christ the King, and the changes made by Pope Pius XII (1939–1958) prior to 1955, chief among them the imposition of the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary upon the universal Church in 1944, the inscription of Pius X into the General Calendar following his 1954 canonization, and the institution of the Feast of the Queenship of Mary in October 1954.
The Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God is a feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the aspect of her motherhood of Jesus Christ, whom she had circumcised on the eighth day after his birth according to Levitical Law. Christians see him as the Lord and Son of God.
The term Christianized calendar refers to feast days which are Christianized reformulations of feasts from pre-Christian times.
The Feast of the Annunciation commemorates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, during which he informed her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is celebrated on 25 March; however, if 25 March falls either in Holy Week or in Easter Week, the feast is postponed to the Monday after the Second Sunday of Easter.
The date of the birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources and the evidence is too incomplete to allow for consistent dating. However, most biblical scholars and ancient historians believe that his birth date is around 4 to 6 BC. Two main approaches have been used to estimate the year of the birth of Jesus: one based on the accounts in the Gospels of his birth with reference to King Herod's reign, and the other by subtracting his stated age of "about 30 years" when he began preaching.
San Juanv or São João is an annual Catholic religious festival celebrated on 24th June in Goa, India. According to tradition, after attending Mass, young Goan Catholic men leap into and swim in local wells, streams, and ponds as a tribute to Saint John the Baptist.
