Calendar of saints

The calendar of saints is a special way Christians organize their year. Each day is linked to one or more saints, and that day is called the feast day or feast of the saint. The word "feast" here doesn't mean a big meal. Instead, it means a yearly religious celebration for a particular saint.

This idea started a long time ago when early Christians remembered each martyr once a year. They did this on the day the martyr died, which they called the martyr's dies natalis in Latin, meaning "day of birth" because it was like their birth into heaven.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, this calendar is called a Menologion. A Menologion can also be a set of icons showing saints in the order of their feast days, often made with two panels.

History

As more saints were recognized during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, each day of the year came to have at least one saint celebrated on it. To manage this growth, some saints were moved to different days in some traditions or removed completely. This means some saints have different feast days in different calendars. For example, saints Perpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, but this date was later used for St. Thomas Aquinas. They were moved to 6 March in 1908, but later returned to 7 March when Thomas Aquinas was moved to 28 January. Both dates can be considered their feast day, depending on the tradition.

The earliest feast days were for martyrs, honored for showing great love for Christ. Saint Martin of Tours is one of the first non-martyrs to be honored as a saint. These saints were called "confessors" because they showed their faith through their lives, not their deaths. Over time, many different titles were used for saints, such as Virgin, Pastor, Bishop, Monk, Priest, Founder, Abbot, Apostle, and Doctor of the Church.

As Christian churches developed different beliefs, they also developed different lists of saints. Sometimes, a person honored as a saint in one church might be seen very differently in another.

Ranking of feast days

Main articles: Ranking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite and Liturgical calendar (Lutheran) § Structure

In the Catholic Church, special days are ranked by how important they are. After the changes made by Vatican II, these days are called solemnities, feasts, or memorials, with some being required and others optional. Earlier forms of the church’s practices had different names for these days as well.

Other churches have their own ways of ranking these special days too. For example, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, days are sometimes called Great Feasts, middle feasts, or minor feasts. The Lutheran Churches use names like Festivals, Lesser Festivals, Days of Devotion, and Commemorations. The Church of England, which is part of the larger Anglican Communion, also has its own group of important days including Principal Feasts, Principal Holy Days, Festivals, Lesser Festivals, and Commemorations.

Connection to tropical cyclones

Before storms were given official names, people in Puerto Rico used to give storms names based on saints celebrated on certain days. For example, the Great Hurricane of 1780 was called San Calixto after the saint celebrated on October 14. Other storms were named San Narciso, San Ciriaco, San Felipe, and San Ciprian after the saints of their days.

This tradition stopped after the United States Weather Bureau began using official names for storms. The last two storms with these special names were Hurricane Betsy in 1956, called Santa Clara, and Hurricane Donna in 1960, called San Lorenzo.