WHITSUNTIDE is probably a contracted form of White Sunday tide or time. In the early ages of Christianity the favourite seasons for administering the rite of baptism were Easter Sunday, the anni versary of the resurrection of Christ, and Whitsunday, that of the Jewish feast of Pentecost, when the apostles were " baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire," and they themselves commenced their public ministry by baptising three thousand persona. As emblematic of the spiritual purity which the rite of baptism is supposed to confer, those who received it were clothed in white, and the day is hence con jectured to have received its name of White Sunday (Dominica alba). Other etymologies more remote and less probable have been given. The rite of baptism was performed in early times on Easter Sunday eve and Whit Sunday eve, that is, on the preceding Saturday evening, when there was a special ceremony of hallowing the font. In a volume of manuscript homilies in the Harleian Library. in the Bridals Museum, No. 2371, it Ls stated, that "in the betunnyug of holy chirch, all the children weren kept to be crystened on thys even, at the font lial lowyng; but now, for enchesone that in so long abydynge they might dye without erystendome, therefore holy chirch ordeyneth to crysten at all times of the ycare ; save, eight dayes before these evenyns, the chyhde shalle abyde till the font hallowing, if it may savely for perrill of death, or ells not."
Our ancestors seem to have indulged to excess in the season of Whitsuntide in all kinds of exercises and amusements, for which many of the parishes provided the needful stimulus, and out of which they claimed their due share of profit : for this purpose a house or barn, which was called the church-house, was set apart, and a quantity of ale was brewed. which was called Whitsun Ale, or Church Ale, and was sold to the parishioners who came there to feast and drink, and gamble, and the profits were applied to the repairs of the church, and sometimen to charitable and other purposes.
(Brady 'a Claris Calendaria ; Strutt's Sports and Pastimes by Hone ; Brand's Popular Antiquities, by Ellis.)