Eastertide, or the Easter Season, or Paschal Time, is the period of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday.^[1]

It is celebrated as a single joyful feast, indeed as the "great Lord's Day".^[2] Each Sunday of the season is treated as a Sunday of Easter, and, after the Sunday of the Resurrection, they are named Second Sunday of Easter, Third Sunday of Easter, etc. up to the Seventh Sunday of Easter, while the whole fifty-day period concludes with Pentecost Sunday.^[3]

Easter Sunday and Pentecost correspond to pre-existing Jewish feasts: The first day of Pesach (פסח) and the holiday of Shavu'ot (שבועות). In the Jewish tradition, the 49 days between these holidays are known as Counting of the Omer (ספירת העומר)‎.^[4]

The first eight days constitute the Octave of Easter and are celebrated as solemnities of the Lord.^[5]

Since 2000 the Second Sunday of Easter is also called Divine Mercy Sunday. The name "Low Sunday" for this Sunday, once common in English, is now rarely used.

The solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated on the fortieth day of Eastertide (a Thursday), except in countries where it is not a Holy Day of Obligation. In such countries it is celebrated on the following Sunday (the forty-third day of Eastertide).^[6] The days from that feast until the Saturday before Pentecost (inclusive) are days of preparation for the Holy Spirit the Paraclete.^[7]

Before the 1969 revision of the calendar, the Sundays were called First Sunday after Easter, Second Sunday after Easter, etc. The Sunday preceding the feast of the Ascension of the Lord was sometimes, though not officially, called Rogation Sunday, and when the Ascension had an octave, the following Sunday was called Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension,^[8] but when this octave was abolished in 1955, it was called Sunday after the Ascension.^[9] Pentecost was followed by an octave, which some reckoned as part of Eastertide.

When the Anglican and Lutheran churches implemented their own calendar and lectionary reforms in 1976, they adopted the same shortened definition of the Easter season as the Roman Catholic Church had promulgated six years earlier. In the Church of England, the Easter season begins with the Easter Vigil and ends after Evening Prayer (or Night Prayer) on the Day of Pentecost. Some Anglican provinces continue to label the Sundays between Easter and the Ascension "Sundays After Easter" rather than "Sundays of Easter"; others, such as the Church of England and ECUSA, use the term "Sundays of Easter".

See also[link]

• Paschal Cycle
• Pentecostarion
• Bright Week
• Mozzetta#Papal mozzetta

References[link]

External links[link]

• Easter Season Resource Library - Crossroads Initiative
• Normae Universales de Anno Liturgico et de Calendario
• French translation
• Writings on Easter, Eastertide and Lent liturgical days
• Liturgy of Hours of Eastertide

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Diana Butler Bass is the author of six books on American religion, three of which have won research or writing awards. She earned a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University in 1991, with an emphasis on American church history where she studied under George Marsden. From 1995–2000, she wrote a weekly column on religion and culture for the New York Times Syndicate that appeared in more than seventy newspapers nationwide. Currently, she is a blogger for the God’s Politics blog with Jim Wallis at Beliefnet ^[1] and is a Red-Letter Christian.

Early life & Career[link]

Born in 1959 in Baltimore, Maryland, as Diana Hochstedt, she grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. Raised a United Methodist, she became an evangelical Christian. She attended Westmont College, a Christian college in Santa Barbara, California, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where she earned a master’s degree in church history. Her spiritual memoir, Strength for the Journey, records her growing dissatisfaction with conservative evangelical religion. She is now a member of the Episcopal Church. For a decade, she worked primarily as a college professor before becoming an independent scholar. In 2002, the Lilly Endowment awarded Bass a major grant to support her research on mainline Protestant churches.

Bass’s books range from a study of nineteenth-century evangelicalism (Standing Against the Whirlwind) to a contemporary ethnography of mainline Protestantism (Christianity for the Rest of Us). Throughout her work, she displays an interest in the role of religion in cultural and social change. She eschews programmatic spirituality and leadership in favor of encouraging Christians to seriously practice their faith as a way to reform American churches and political life.

Two of her books, Strength for the Journey ^[2] and Christianity for the Rest of Us ^[3] have been named among the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Christianity for the Rest of Us was named Book of the Year by the Academy of Parish Clergy.^[4] Standing against the Whirlwind was awarded the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize by the American Society of Church History.

Her work has been written about by USA Today,^[5] US News and World Report,^[6] Newsweek,^[7] The Washington Post,^[8] the Los Angeles Times,^[9] and other papers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.^[10] She has appeared on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly ^[11] and is, along with Martin E. Marty, one of two scholars chosen to represent Mainline Protestantism in The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, a book edited by the show's host, Bob Abernethy.

Personal life[link]

She is married to Richard Bass and is the mother of two children. Her sister-in-law, Dorothy C. Bass, is a theologian of Christian practice.

Bibliography[link]

• Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (Harper One, 2012)
• A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story (Harper One, 2009)
• Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper One, 2006)
• From Nomads to Pilgrims: Stories from Practicing Congregations (Alban, 2006), with Joseph Stewart-Sicking
• The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church (Alban, 2004)
• Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship (Jossey-Bass, 2004)
• Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community (Jossey-Bass, 2002)
• Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford University Press, 1995) published as "Diana Hochstedt Butler"

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site of Diana Butler Bass