09 — The Feasts in Orthodox Life

The feasts are not only celebrated in church but lived — prepared for by fasting and marked in the home and the field by custom. This closing section treats the two ways the feasts enter daily Orthodox life: the fasts and fast-free periods that give the festal year its rhythm of preparation and rejoicing, and the reception of the feasts across the Orthodox world, where a common liturgical inheritance takes on many local forms.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Purpose

A Great Feast is felt in the body (through the fast that precedes it and the feast that breaks it) and in the culture (through custom, folk-name, and local rite). These two files carry the feasts out of the church and into the year as it is lived, with a sober assessment of what is dogma, what is discipline, and what is custom.

Navigation

File Description
fasting-and-feasting.md The Nativity and Dormition fasts; the strict-fast Great Feasts; the fast-free periods and the rhythm of preparation and rejoicing
the-feasts-across-the-orthodox-world.md Folk customs, blessings, and local reception across the Orthodox traditions; a brief assessment

See Also