The Christians from the start appear to have observed
"the first day of the week" [7] in memory of Christ's resurrection.
They attended public worship on the Lord's Day, but otherwise did not rigidly
abstain from worldly business and amusements. The Jewish element in some
churches, and especially in the East, was strong enough to secure an additional
observance of Saturday as a weekly festival. Saturday long continued to be
marked by religious assemblies and feasting, though not by any compulsory
cessation of the ordinary occupations. During the fourth century Sunday, as the
Lord's Day was now generally called, came more and more to be kept as a day of
obligatory rest. Constantine's Sunday law formed the first of a long series
of imperial edicts imposing the observance of that day as a legal duty. In this
manner Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, was
dedicated wholly to the exercises of religion.
The great yearly festivals of the Church gradually took
shape during the early Christian centuries. The most important anniversary to
be observed was Easter, in memory of the resurrection of Christ. A period of
fasting (Lent), which finally lasted forty days, preceded the festival.
Whitsunday, or Pentecost, was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Easter. [9]
Two other festivals of later adoption were Christmas, the celebration of which
was finally assigned to the 25th of December, and Epiphany (January 6),
commemorating the baptism of Christ. In course of time many other feasts and
fasts, together with numerous saints' days, were added to the calendar of the
"Christian Year."
