Easter Week

Easter Week or Bright Week is the period of seven days from Easter Sunday through the Saturday following.

Western Church

In the Latin Rite of Roman Catholicism, Anglican and other Western churches, Easter Week is the week beginning with the Christian feast of Easter and ending a week later on Easter Saturday.cite web|url=http://www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/calendar/seasons.html|title=The Calendar: The Seasons|publisher=The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England|year=2000–2006|accessdate=2008-02-04] The term is sometimes inaccurately used to mean the week "before" Easter, which is properly known as Holy Week, and particularly confusing in this context is the secular usage of the term "Easter Saturday" to refer to the day known liturgically as Holy Saturday or Easter Eve (the day before Easter), rather than the Saturday following Easter.

While the first day of Easter Week is called "Easter Day" or "Easter Sunday", the other days in the week may be designated according to any of the following patterns: (1) "Monday of Easter Week" (e.g. in the Church of England's "Common Worship" calendar), (2) "Monday in Easter Week" (e.g. in the Church of England's "Book of Common Prayer" calendar), or (3) "Easter Monday". In former years, Easter, as the most important celebration in Christianity, was observed for a week, and it still is celebrated in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church and Anglicanism with an octave. However, owing to modern working patterns, many Easter celebrations now occur on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday only.

Eastern Church

In the Eastern Orthodox Church and in Eastern Catholic Churches, the days of Bright Week are named: Bright Monday, Bright Tuesday, etc. Each day repeats the joyful hymns of Pascha (Easter), with only a few variations, taken from the Octoechos, according to the Eight Tones of the Orthodox liturgy. One tone (with the exception of the Seventh Tone—known as the "Grave Tone") is assigned to each day:

*Sunday of Pascha (Tone One)
*Bright Monday (Tone Two)
*Bright Tuesday (Tone Three)
*Bright Wednesday (Tone Four)
*Bright Thursday (Tone Five)
*Bright Friday (Tone Six)
*Bright Saturday (Tone Eight)

Bright Week is considered to be one single joyful day, although the celebrations on the Sunday of Pascha are the most solemn. The Divine Services are completely different during this time than any other time of the year. Everything during the service is sung joyfully, rather than read. There is no reading from the Psalter, and the services are much shorter than usual. There is no fasting during Bright Week. The Holy Doors in the iconostasis remain open throughout the entire week, and the Artos (a leavened loaf of bread that was blessed during the Paschal Vigil) remains in the church and is venerated by everyone as they enter the temple as a way of "greeting the Resurrected Christ".

Bright Friday is the annual feast day of a Wonder-working icon of the Theotokos (Mother of God), known as the "Life-giving Spring", and there are optional hymns which may be chanted in honor of the feast in addition to the paschal hymns. If any other feasts on the fixed cycle occur during Bright Week, they are transferred to a convenient day after Thomas Sunday.

Just before the beginning of the Ninth Hour on Bright Saturday, the Holy Doors are closed, and the services begin to return to their more normal form (although the chanting of the Troparion of Pascha, "Christ is risen from the dead...", as well as certain other paschal hymns, continue to be chanted until Ascension.

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