WHITSUNDAY or PENTECOST, one of the principal feasts of the Christian Church, celebrated on the fiftieth day after Easter to commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The day became one of the three baptismal seasons, and the name Whitsunday is now generally attributed to the white garments formerly worn by the candidates for baptism on the vigil, as in the case of the Dominica in albis. The festival is the third in importance of the great feasts of the Church and the last of the annual cycle commemorating the Lord. It is con nected with the Jewish Pentecost (q.v.), not only in the historical date of its origin (see Acts ii.), but in idea; the Jewish festival is one of thanks for the first-fruits of the earth, the Christian for the first-fruits of the Spirit. In the early Church the name of Pentecost was given to the whole fifty days between Easter and Whitsunday, which were celebrated as a period of rejoicing (Tertullian, De idolatr. c. 12, De bapt. 19, De cor. milit. 3, Apost. Canons, c, 37, Council of Antioch, A.D. 341, can. 2o). As the designation of the fiftieth day of this period, the word Pente cost occurs for the first time in a canon of the council of Elvira (c. 305), which denounces as an heretical abuse the tendency to celebrate the 4oth day (Ascension) instead of the soth. There is plentiful evidence that the festival was regarded very early as one of the great feasts; Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. xliv. De
Pentec.) calls it the "day of the Spirit" (7),uipa roi) lIv€14taros), and in 385 the Peregrinatio Silviae (see Duchesne, Origines, App.) describes its elaborate celebration at Jerusalem.
In the middle ages the Whitsun services were marked by many curious customs. Among those described by Durandus (Rationale div. off. vi. 107) are the letting down of a dove from the roof into the church, the dropping of balls of fire, rose-leaves and the like. Whitsun is one of the Scottish quarter-days, and though the Church festival is movable, the legal date was fixed for the 15th of May by an act of 1693. Whit-Monday, which, with the Sunday itself, was the occasion for the greatest of all the me diaeval church ales, was made an English Bank Holiday by an act passed on the 25th of May 1871.
See Duchesne, Origines du culte Chritien (1889) ; W. Smith and Cheetham, Dic. of Christian Antiquities (1874-188o) ; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopddie (1904), xv. 254, s.v. "Pfingsten." For the many superstitions and observances of the day see P. H. Ditchfield, Old Eng lish Customs (1897) ; Brand, Antiquities of Great Britain (Hazlitt's edit., 1905) ; B. Picart, Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tons les peuples (1723) .