Template:Short description Template:Redirect2 {{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other{{#switch:Easter + 49 days|January 1|January 2|January 3|January 4|January 5|January 6|January 7|January 8|January 9|January 10|January 11|January 12|January 13|January 14|January 15|January 16|January 17|January 18|January 19|January 20|January 21|January 22|January 23|January 24|January 25|January 26|January 27|January 28|January 29|January 30|January 31|February 1|February 2|February 3|February 4|February 5|February 6|February 7|February 8|February 9|February 10|February 11|February 12|February 13|February 14|February 15|February 16|February 17|February 18|February 19|February 20|February 21|February 22|February 23|February 24|February 25|February 26|February 27|February 28|February 29|February 30|February 31|March 1|March 2|March 3|March 4|March 5|March 6|March 7|March 8|March 9|March 10|March 11|March 12|March 13|March 14|March 15|March 16|March 17|March 18|March 19|March 20|March 21|March 22|March 23|March 24|March 25|March 26|March 27|March 28|March 29|March 30|March 31|April 1|April 2|April 3|April 4|April 5|April 6|April 7|April 8|April 9|April 10|April 11|April 12|April 13|April 14|April 15|April 16|April 17|April 18|April 19|April 20|April 21|April 22|April 23|April 24|April 25|April 26|April 27|April 28|April 29|April 30|April 31|May 1|May 2|May 3|May 4|May 5|May 6|May 7|May 8|May 9|May 10|May 11|May 12|May 13|May 14|May 15|May 16|May 17|May 18|May 19|May 20|May 21|May 22|May 23|May 24|May 25|May 26|May 27|May 28|May 29|May 30|May 31|June 1|June 2|June 3|June 4|June 5|June 6|June 7|June 8|June 9|June 10|June 11|June 12|June 13|June 14|June 15|June 16|June 17|June 18|June 19|June 20|June 21|June 22|June 23|June 24|June 25|June 26|June 27|June 28|June 29|June 30|June 31|July 1|July 2|July 3|July 4|July 5|July 6|July 7|July 8|July 9|July 10|July 11|July 12|July 13|July 14|July 15|July 16|July 17|July 18|July 19|July 20|July 21|July 22|July 23|July 24|July 25|July 26|July 27|July 28|July 29|July 30|July 31|August 1|August 2|August 3|August 4|August 5|August 6|August 7|August 8|August 9|August 10|August 11|August 12|August 13|August 14|August 15|August 16|August 17|August 18|August 19|August 20|August 21|August 22|August 23|August 24|August 25|August 26|August 27|August 28|August 29|August 30|August 31|September 1|September 2|September 3|September 4|September 5|September 6|September 7|September 8|September 9|September 10|September 11|September 12|September 13|September 14|September 15|September 16|September 17|September 18|September 19|September 20|September 21|September 22|September 23|September 24|September 25|September 26|September 27|September 28|September 29|September 30|September 31|October 1|October 2|October 3|October 4|October 5|October 6|October 7|October 8|October 9|October 10|October 11|October 12|October 13|October 14|October 15|October 16|October 17|October 18|October 19|October 20|October 21|October 22|October 23|October 24|October 25|October 26|October 27|October 28|October 29|October 30|October 31|November 1|November 2|November 3|November 4|November 5|November 6|November 7|November 8|November 9|November 10|November 11|November 12|November 13|November 14|November 15|November 16|November 17|November 18|November 19|November 20|November 21|November 22|November 23|November 24|November 25|November 26|November 27|November 28|November 29|November 30|November 31|December 1|December 2|December 3|December 4|December 5|December 6|December 7|December 8|December 9|December 10|December 11|December 12|December 13|December 14|December 15|December 16|December 17|December 18|December 19|December 20|December 21|December 22|December 23|December 24|December 25|December 26|December 27|December 28|December 29|December 30|December 31=|{{#switch:Easter + 49 days|1 January|2 January|3 January|4 January|5 January|6 January|7 January|8 January|9 January|10 January|11 January|12 January|13 January|14 January|15 January|16 January|17 January|18 January|19 January|20 January|21 January|22 January|23 January|24 January|25 January|26 January|27 January|28 January|29 January|30 January|31 January|1 February|2 February|3 February|4 February|5 February|6 February|7 February|8 February|9 February|10 February|11 February|12 February|13 February|14 February|15 February|16 February|17 February|18 February|19 February|20 February|21 February|22 February|23 February|24 February|25 February|26 February|27 February|28 February|29 February|30 February|31 February|1 March|2 March|3 March|4 March|5 March|6 March|7 March|8 March|9 March|10 March|11 March|12 March|13 March|14 March|15 March|16 March|17 March|18 March|19 March|20 March|21 March|22 March|23 March|24 March|25 March|26 March|27 March|28 March|29 March|30 March|31 March|1 April|2 April|3 April|4 April|5 April|6 April|7 April|8 April|9 April|10 April|11 April|12 April|13 April|14 April|15 April|16 April|17 April|18 April|19 April|20 April|21 April|22 April|23 April|24 April|25 April|26 April|27 April|28 April|29 April|30 April|31 April|1 May|2 May|3 May|4 May|5 May|6 May|7 May|8 May|9 May|10 May|11 May|12 May|13 May|14 May|15 May|16 May|17 May|18 May|19 May|20 May|21 May|22 May|23 May|24 May|25 May|26 May|27 May|28 May|29 May|30 May|31 May|1 June|2 June|3 June|4 June|5 June|6 June|7 June|8 June|9 June|10 June|11 June|12 June|13 June|14 June|15 June|16 June|17 June|18 June|19 June|20 June|21 June|22 June|23 June|24 June|25 June|26 June|27 June|28 June|29 June|30 June|31 June|1 July|2 July|3 July|4 July|5 July|6 July|7 July|8 July|9 July|10 July|11 July|12 July|13 July|14 July|15 July|16 July|17 July|18 July|19 July|20 July|21 July|22 July|23 July|24 July|25 July|26 July|27 July|28 July|29 July|30 July|31 July|1 August|2 August|3 August|4 August|5 August|6 August|7 August|8 August|9 August|10 August|11 August|12 August|13 August|14 August|15 August|16 August|17 August|18 August|19 August|20 August|21 August|22 August|23 August|24 August|25 August|26 August|27 August|28 August|29 August|30 August|31 August|1 September|2 September|3 September|4 September|5 September|6 September|7 September|8 September|9 September|10 September|11 September|12 September|13 September|14 September|15 September|16 September|17 September|18 September|19 September|20 September|21 September|22 September|23 September|24 September|25 September|26 September|27 September|28 September|29 September|30 September|31 September|1 October|2 October|3 October|4 October|5 October|6 October|7 October|8 October|9 October|10 October|11 October|12 October|13 October|14 October|15 October|16 October|17 October|18 October|19 October|20 October|21 October|22 October|23 October|24 October|25 October|26 October|27 October|28 October|29 October|30 October|31 October|1 November|2 November|3 November|4 November|5 November|6 November|7 November|8 November|9 November|10 November|11 November|12 November|13 November|14 November|15 November|16 November|17 November|18 November|19 November|20 November|21 November|22 November|23 November|24 November|25 November|26 November|27 November|28 November|29 November|30 November|31 November|1 December|2 December|3 December|4 December|5 December|6 December|7 December|8 December|9 December|10 December|11 December|12 December|13 December|14 December|15 December|16 December|17 December|18 December|19 December|20 December|21 December|22 December|23 December|24 December|25 December|26 December|27 December|28 December|29 December|30 December|31 December=|}}}}{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:Infobox holiday with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|ignoreblank=y| alt | begins | caption | celebrations | date | date2007 | date2008 | date2009 | date2010 | date2011 | date2012 | date2013 | date2014 | date2015 | date2016 | date2017 | date2018 | date2019 | date2020 | date2021 | date2022 | date2023 | date2024 | date2025 | date2025 | date2026 | date2027 | date2028 | date2029 | date2030 | duration | ends | firsttime | frequency | holiday_name | image | image_size | imagesize | lasttime | litcolor | longtype | mdy | month | nickname | observances | observedby | official_name | relatedto | scheduling | significance | startedby | type | week_ordinal | weekday }} Whitsun (also Whitsunday or Whit Sunday) is the name used in Britain,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and other countries among Anglicans and Methodists,<ref name="BOW1964">Template:Cite book</ref> for the Christian holy day of Pentecost. It falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ disciples (as described in Acts 2). Whitsuntide, the week following Whitsunday, was one of three holiday weeks for the medieval villein;<ref>The others being Yuletide, the week following Christmas, and Easter Week, the week following Easter that ended at Hocktide (Homans 1991).</ref> on most manors he was free from service on the lord's demesne this week, which marked a pause in the agricultural year.<ref>George C. Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, 2nd ed. 1991:369.</ref> Whit Monday, the day after Whitsun, remained a holiday in Britain until 1971<ref name="Financial Dealings Act 1971">Banking and Financial Dealings Act, 1971, Schedule 1, para 1.</ref> when, with effect from 1972, the ruling Conservative Government decided to permanently replace it, following a five-year trial period, with a Spring Bank Holiday on the last Monday in May. Whit had been the occasion for many varied forms of celebration, and was of significant cultural importance. It was a custom for children to receive a new set of clothes, even among the poorest families, a tradition which continued well into the 20th century.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In the North West of England, church and chapel parades called whit walks still take place at this time (sometimes on Whit Friday, the Friday after Whitsun).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Typically, the parades include brass bands and choirs; girls attending are dressed in white. Traditionally, Whit fairs (sometimes called Whitsun ales<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>) took place. Other customs, such as Morris dancing, were associated with Whitsun, although in most cases they have been transferred to the Spring bank holiday. Whaddon, Cambridgeshire, has its own Whitsun tradition of singing a unique song around the village before and on Whit Sunday itself.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
EtymologyEdit
The name is a contraction of "White Sunday", attested in "the Holy Ghost, whom thou didst send on Whit-sunday"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> in the Old English homilies, and parallel to the mention of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in the early 13th-century Ancrene Riwle.<ref>Both noted in Walter William Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. "Whitsun".</ref> Walter William Skeat noted that the Anglo-Saxon word also appears in Icelandic hvitasunnu-dagr, but that in English the feast was called Pentecoste until after the Norman Conquest, when white ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) began to be confused with wit or understanding.<ref>Skeat.</ref> According to one interpretation, the name derives from the white garments worn by catechumens, those expecting to be baptised on that Sunday.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Moreover, in England white vestments, rather than the more usual red, were traditional for the day and its octave.Template:Citation needed A different tradition is that of the young women of the parish all coming to church or chapel in new white dresses on that day. However, Augustinian canon John Mirk (c. 1382–1414), of Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire, had another interpretation:
Goode men and woymen, as ȝe knowen wele all, þys day ys called Whitsonday, for bycause þat þe Holy Gost as þys day broȝt wyt and wysdome ynto all Cristes dyscyples.<ref>Theodore Erbe (editor) (1905). Mirk's Festial: a Collection of Homilies, Kegan Paul et al., for the Early English Text Society, p.159 accessed 15 December 2014 at Internet Archive.</ref>
Thus, he thought the root of the word was "wit" (formerly spelt "wyt" or "wytte") and Pentecost was so-called to signify the outpouring of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost on Christ's disciples.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The following day is Whit Monday, a name coined to supersede the form Monday in Whitsun-week used by John Wycliffe and others. The week following Whit Sunday is known as "Whitsuntide" or "Whit week".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
HistoryEdit
As the first holiday of the summer, Whitsun was one of the favourite times in the traditional calendar, and Whit Sunday, or the following week, was a time for celebration. This took the form of fêtes, fairs, pageants and parades, with Whitsun ales and Morris dancing in the south of England and Whit walks, Club Days and wakes in the north.<ref name="Roud">Template:Cite book</ref> A poster advertising the Whitsun festivities at Sunbury, Middlesex in 1778 listed the following attractions:
On Whit Monday, in the morning, will be a punting matchTemplate:Nbsp...Template:NbspThe first boat that comes in to receive a guinea...In the afternoon a gold-laced hat, worth 30s. to be cudgell'd forTemplate:Nbsp... On Whit Tuesday, in the morning, a fine Holland smock and ribbons, to be run for by girls and young women. And in the afternoon six pairs of buckskin gloves to be wrestled for.<ref name="Roud"/>
In Manchester during the 17th century the nearby Kersal Moor Whit races were the great event of the year when large numbers of people turned the area into a giant fairground for several days.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> With the coming of industrialisation it became convenient to close down whole towns for a week in order to clean and maintain the machinery in the mills and factories. The week of closure, or wakes week, was often held at Whitsuntide. A report in John Harlan and T.T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folk lore (1882) reads:
It is customary for the cotton mills etc., to close for Whitsuntide week to give the hands a holiday; the men going to the races etc. and the women visiting Manchester on Whit-Saturday, thronging the markets, the Royal Exchange and the Infirmary Esplanade, and other public places: And gazing in at the shop windows, whence this day is usually called 'Gaping Sunday'.<ref name="Roud"/>
Whit Monday was officially recognised as a bank holiday in the UK in 1871, but lost this status in 1972 when the fixed Spring Bank Holiday was created.<ref name="Financial Dealings Act 1971"/>
In literatureEdit
- 1485: Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur has the Knights of the Round Table witness a divine vision of the Holy Grail on a Whitsunday, prompting their quest to find its true location.
- 1607: Thomas Middleton refers to "the Whitsun holy-days" in Michaelmas Term (IV.i.73).
- 1611: In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale Perdita imagines that she plays "as I have seen them do / In Whitsun pastorals" (IV.iv.133-34).
- 1617: James I's Declaration of Sports encouraged "Whitsun ales", among other things, as soon as church was over on a Sunday.
- 1633: George Herbert wrote a poem called "Whitsunday", first published in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations.
- 1759-67: Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman contains several allusions to Whitsuntide.
- 1785: Samuel Johnson records in his Prayers and Meditations that "Between Easter and Whitsun-tide [1773 . . . he] attempted to learn the Low Dutch language." James Boswell reproduces the remark in his Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).
- 1787: The Whitsun Donative was an anonymous satirical pamphlet inspired by Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
- 1844: Whitsun is central to religious life in Swiss author Jeremias Gotthelf's novel Money and Spirit.
- 1849: Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley contains an episode set against a Whitsun-tide procession in which Anglican parishioners are confronted by dissenters.
- 1853: Charles Dickens sets a scene in the life of King Edward I on "one Friday in Whitsun week" in A Child's History of England.
- 1853: Christina Rossetti wrote a poem called "Whitsun Eve", published posthumously in 1896.
- 1861: George Eliot mentioned Whitsun in her novel Silas Marner.
- 1875: Charles Dickens's posthumous collection The Uncommercial Traveller includes (in Chapter 21) a reflection on "one day in the Whitsun week last past".
- 1875: In Anthony Trollope's book The Way We Live Now many of the aristocrats leave London and travel to their country estates, or those of their acquaintances, for the week of Whitsuntide.
- 1896: H. G. Wells refers to Whitsun in "The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham", later included in The Country of the Blind and Other Stories.
- 1897: In H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man, important events take place around Whit Monday and subsequent days.
- 1911: The short story "The Wrong Shape" in G. K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown takes place in Whitsuntide.
- 1916: James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man contains reference (in Chapter 2) to a Whitsuntide play at Stephen Dedalus's school, Belvedere College.
- 1922: James Joyce's novel Ulysses contains four references to Whit Monday. Leopold Bloom is stung by a bee on Whitmonday, 23 May 1904.
- 1932: Agatha Christie's short story "Ingots of Gold" references Whitsuntide and Whit Monday as clues in solving the crime.
- 1936: In Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley detective novel Dead Men's Morris (Michael Joseph, 1936, reprinted 1986) the story of the murders of an Oxfordshire solicitor and his rival, a landowner, begins on Christmas Eve, and reaches its climax with a Morris dance performance on Whit-Monday.
- 1938: In Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, Hale is murdered on Whitsun, kicking off events in the novel.
- 1943: Kathleen Raine's poem "Whitsuntide 1942" provides the title for her first poetry collection, Stone and Flower, by referencing 'the world / of stone and flower that compels my thought... what nerve have I, beloved Lord, what sense / to know the holy presence of my God?'
- 1950: The autobiographical novel A Voice Through a Cloud by Denton Welch concerns the author's near-fatal bike accident and its aftermath, which occurred on a Whitsun holiday.
- 1957: Enid Blyton's Five Go to Billycock Hill is a novel in the Famous Five series of children's books set during a camping holiday at Whitsun.
- 1961: Sylvia Plath wrote a poem called "Whitsun", published posthumously in 1971.
- 1964: The Whitsun Weddings is a poem and the title of a collection by Philip Larkin.
- 1965: "Whitsunday in Kirchstetten" is a poem by W. H. Auden, from his collection About the House.
- 1973: Thomas Pynchon refers to Whitsun in his novel Gravity's Rainbow (section 2, 20).
- 2010: In Washington: A Life, a 2010 biography by Ron Chernow, George Washington is said to have included a drinking allowance in an employment contract with one of his gardeners, allowing "two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk four days and four nights" (p. 135).
- 2011: Several episodes in author Jeff Wheeler's Muirwood Trilogy revolve around Whitsunday and its significance and impact on Muirwood's inhabitants.
- 2022: Whitsun is mentioned in Gillian McAllister's "Wrong Place Wrong Time"
In filmEdit
- 1942: The Second World War film Went the Day Well? depicts the fictional takeover of an English village by German soldiers over Whitsun weekend.
- 1995: P.R.O.B.E: The Devil of Winterborne takes place over the Whitsun holiday.
See alsoEdit
- Whitsun Ale (esp., English), a county fair with competitions, Morris dancing, and music, usually sponsored by a local pub or tavern.
- Semik
- Rusalii
- Counting of the Omer