Red-Letter Days — Great Orthodox Feasts

What the Expression “Red Letter” Means

The expression red letter comes from the old way of printing church calendars. Ordinary days in the calendar were written in black, while the great feasts were highlighted in red — so they would catch the eye at once and remind the believer that this day is special, dedicated to God and to some holy event or saint. From this, “red letter” became, in popular usage, a synonym for a great feast, a solemnly kept and, as a rule, non-working day.

The colour red was not chosen by chance in church tradition. It is the colour of feast, of joy, and of Christ’s sacrifice — a colour that marks solemnity and sets a feast apart from the run of ordinary days. When we see a red letter in the calendar, it is an invitation to pause, to come to the Divine Liturgy, and to spend that day differently from the everyday routine.

Pascha — the Feast of Feasts

At the head of all feasts stands Pascha (Easter) — the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not counted among the twelve great feasts because it stands above them; the Church calls it “the feast of feasts and the celebration of celebrations.” Pascha is a movable feast — its date is calculated according to the spring full moon, so it falls on a different date every year, and a whole series of other feasts depend on it.

The Twelve Great Feasts

After Pascha, the greatest are the so-called twelve great feasts. They are:

1. The Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos
2. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
3. The Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple
4. The Nativity of Christ (Christmas)
5. Theophany (the Baptism of the Lord)
6. The Meeting of the Lord (Candlemas)
7. The Annunciation
8. The Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday)
9. The Ascension of the Lord
10. The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost)
11. The Transfiguration of the Lord
12. The Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos

Of these feasts, some are fixed (they have a set date, such as Christmas and Theophany), while others are movable (they depend on the date of Pascha, such as Palm Sunday, the Ascension, and Pentecost). All are marked in the calendar with a red letter.

Alongside the twelve great feasts, the Circumcision of the Lord (together with St Basil), the Nativity of St John the Baptist, the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and the Beheading of St John the Baptist are also celebrated as great feasts.

Folk and National Feasts

Besides the general Christian feasts, the Serbian Orthodox calendar also marks in red certain days of particular national and spiritual significance to the Serbian people:

• St Sava’s Day (27 January) — the first Serbian archbishop, enlightener and patron of the Serbian people and of Serbian schooling. Celebrated in every Serbian church and school.
• Vidovdan (28 June) — the day of the Holy Great Martyr Prince Lazar and all the Serbian holy martyrs who fell at Kosovo. It carries deep national as well as liturgical meaning.

These feasts bear witness to how faith and national memory among the Serbian people have been closely interwoven through the centuries.

The Tradition of Rest on a Feast Day

By church tradition, on the great feasts marked in red the faithful refrain from heavy and unnecessary labour. The reason is not that work is in itself sinful — work is a blessing — but that a feast ought to be properly celebrated: attending the Divine Liturgy, praying, and spending the day in peace, with family, and in works of mercy.

This is not a legal prohibition or a rule imposed by force, but a call to the heart. Urgent tasks, the care of the sick, feeding livestock, and every work of mercy are not forbidden — the Lord Christ Himself did good and healed even on a feast day. The point of resting from labour on a feast is that, at least on that day, a person set aside time for God rather than remaining enslaved to everyday cares.

The full list of feasts and their dates can be followed through the Orthodox calendar, where every great feast is specially marked. In this way the believer knows in advance when the red letters are coming and can prepare in time — through fasting, confession, and prayer — to meet the feast with a ready soul.

The Difference Between a Red-Letter Day and a Krsna Slava

Finally, a common confusion should be clarified. A red-letter day marks a general church feast celebrated by the whole Church — Christmas, Pascha, St Sava’s Day, and others. A krsna slava, by contrast, is a family feast: the day on which a Serbian family celebrates its patron saint, inherited from generation to generation, since the conversion of their ancestors.

A krsna slava need not be marked in red in the general calendar — yet within the family it is celebrated with equal, and often greater, reverence than many general feasts. Thus every household has its own “red day” of the year, even when it is not a great feast for the rest of the Church. The slava is a unique expression of Serbian Orthodox piety and preserves a family’s bond with its patron saint across generations.