Home›Holidays & Festivals›Observance Type›PurificationBrowse ByPurificationThis page groups holidays by what adherents actually do to keep them. Wikipedia notes that in ancient Rome "public business was suspended for the performance of religious rites on the feriae." Browsing by observance type lets a visitor compare how differently two holidays are actually kept.FactsLearn MorePurificationSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsOverviewWhat Defines This GroupingWell-attestedDays a tradition's calendar sets apart - feasts, fasts, festivals, high holy days and lesser observances - each reckoned in the calendar of the tradition that keeps it. Those calendars are lunar, lunisolar, sidereal-solar or tropical-solar and none is the civil Gregorian year, so a date fixed in its own reckoning moves against the civil calendar year by year. 1Learn MoreThe Festivals and Holy Days This category holds the festivals and holy days of the religious calendars: fixed and movable feasts, fasts, new years, solstice and equinox observances, and commemorations of events and figures. Each entry records the tradition, the calendar by which the date is reckoned, and what the day marks. Holy days give a religion its year, a repeating cycle of remembrance and renewal that structures communal life. Some commemorate an event held to be historical or mythic; others mark a turn of the season or the calendar; others are set aside for fasting, penitence or joy.Reckoning the Date Because traditions use different calendars, the same festival can fall on different dates from year to year, and movable feasts (Easter, the Islamic festivals, the Hindu festivals set by lunar dates), shift against the civil calendar in ways the entries explain. The reckoning of dates is itself part of a festival's character, tying it to the calendars gathered elsewhere in the atlas. The holidays group by kind (feasts, fasts, festivals, high holy days and observances), so a reader can compare, for instance, the major fasts of several traditions together.PurificationFilter Results8 entriesTraditionAllArmenian Apostolic Church (1)Church of Cyprus (2)Church of England (1)Church of Greece (2)Church of Sweden (1)Coptic Orthodoxy (1)Eastern Orthodoxy (2)Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (2)Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1)Georgian Orthodox Church (2)Greek Orthodox Church (2)Lutheranism (1)Old Believers (2)Oriental Orthodoxy (1)Roman Catholicism (1)Romanian Orthodox Church (2)Russian Orthodox Church (2)Serbian Orthodox Church (2)Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (2)Ukrainian Orthodox Church (2)Calendar SystemAllGregorian (civil solar) (5)Hindu lunisolar (panchanga) (1)Julian (Old Calendar) (1)Roman civil calendar (2)Date TypeAllFixed date in its own calendar (6)Set by an astronomical event or computus (1)Set by observation or authority within a window (1)MonthAllFebruary (2)January (1)March (1)Origin EraAll200 (1)384 (1)800 (1)1600 (1)1700 (1)1950 (1)HonoursAllVesta (1)Place of OriginAllIndia (1)Ireland (1)Italy (2)Japan (1)Nigeria (1)UNESCO StatusAllInscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (1)Status TodayAllLiving tradition, practised today (5)Show ResultsBrowseCompareSelect all 8CandlemasPurificationHinamatsuriPurificationImbolcPurificationKumbh MelaPurificationLupercaliaPurificationOsun-Osogbo FestivalPurificationTheophanyPurificationVestaliaPurificationSources1. The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoningtier 1Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Oxford University Press, 1999Part II: Calendars and ChronologyView the SourceDivinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptionstier 1Comments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.