NAME

DateTime::Calendar::Liturgical::Christian - calendar of the church year

SYNOPSIS

 $dtclc = DateTime::Calendar::Liturgical::Christian->new(
    day=>4,
    month=>6,
    year=>2006);

 print $dtclc->name();    # 'Pentecost'
 print $dtclc->colour();  # 'red'

DESCRIPTION

This module will return the name, season, week number and liturgical colour for any day in the Gregorian calendar. It will eventually support the liturgical calendars of several churches (hopefully at least Anglican, Lutheran, Orthodox and Roman Catholic). At present it only knows the calendar for the Episcopal Church of the USA.

If you find bugs, or if you have information on the calendar of another liturgical church, please do let me know (thomas at thurman dot org dot uk).

OVERVIEW

Some churches use a special church calendar. Days and seasons within the year may be either "fasts" (solemn times) or "feasts" (joyful times). The year is structured around the greatest feast in the calendar, the festival of the Resurrection of Jesus, known as Easter, and the second greatest feast, the festival of the Nativity of Jesus, known as Christmas. Before Christmas and Easter there are solemn fast seasons known as Advent and Lent respectively. After Christmas comes the feast of Epiphany, and after Easter comes the feast of Pentecost. These days have the adjacent seasons named after them.

The church's new year falls on Advent Sunday, which occurs around the start of December. Then follows the four-week fast season of Advent, then comes the Christmas season, which lasts twelve days; then comes Epiphany, then the forty days of Lent. Then comes Easter, then the long season of Pentecost (which some churches call Trinity, after the feast which falls soon after Pentecost). Then the next year begins and we return to Advent again.

Along with all these, the church remembers the women and men who have made a positive difference in church history by designating feast days for them, usually on the anniversary of their death. For example, we remember St. Andrew on the 30th day of November in the Western churches. Every Sunday is the feast day of Jesus, and if it has no other name is numbered according to the season in which it falls. So, for example, the third Sunday in Pentecost season would be called Pentecost 3.

Seasons are traditionally assigned colours, which are used for clothing and other materials. The major feasts are coloured white or gold. Fasts are purple. Feasts for martyrs (people who died for their faith) are red. Other days are green.

CONSTRUCTOR

new ([ OPTIONS ])

This constructs a DateTime::Calendar::Liturgical::Christian object. It takes a series of named options. Possible options are:

year (required). The year AD in the Gregorian calendar.

month (required). The month number in the Gregorian calendar. 1 is January.

day (required). The day of the month.

tradition (recommended). The tradition to use. Currently only ECUSA is known.

advent_blue. It is currently popular in ECUSA to colour Advent blue, instead of purple, which will happen if this option is set to 1.

bvm_blue. Some people mark feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, with blue instead of white. This will happen if this option is set to 1. To tell the difference between this blue and advent_blue's blue, see the bvm method, below.

rose. Some people colour the middle Sundays of Lent and Advent pink, or "rose", instead of purple. This will happen if this option is set to 1.

from_object ( OBJECT )

Constructs a DateTime::Calendar::Liturgical::Christian object from an object of any other DateTime class.

METHODS

name

Returns the name of the feast, if any.

season

Returns the season.

colour

Returns the colour of the day. Can be red, green, white, or purple, or blue or rose if the relevant options are set.

color

Alternative spelling of colour.

bvm

Returns true if the current day is a feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This can be used to distinguish Advent blue from Marian blue.

day

Returns the day number which was used to construct the object.

month

Returns the month number which was used to construct the object.

year

Returns the year number which was used to construct the object.

SEE ALSO

DateTime.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2006 Thomas Thurman. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

If you use this software, please consider sending me an email at thomas at thurman dot org dot uk, so that I can see where it's being used.