About Whit Sunday
Whit Sunday — Pentecost Sunday — falls exactly fifty days after Easter Sunday and is the third highest feast of the Christian year, after Easter and Christmas. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, as told in the Acts of the Apostles: tongues of fire appeared above their heads, and they began to speak in different languages so the gathered crowd from many nations could understand them. The name Pentecost comes from the Greek pentekoste, meaning fiftieth. It is the birthday of the Church. The English Whit derives from White Sunday, after the white robes worn by the newly baptised. Whit Sunday closes the seven-week Easter season; the following day in many countries continues as Whit Monday.
Whit Sunday is celebrated with red liturgical vestments — the colour of the tongues of fire — and the singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus. Churches are often decorated with greenery and birch branches, especially in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia, recalling the agricultural background of the original Jewish feast of Shavuot. In Italy red rose petals are sometimes scattered from the roof of the Pantheon in Rome onto the congregation below — a tradition revived in recent decades. In rural Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands the Pentecost weekend marks the start of the open-air season, with fairs, processions and folk festivals. In Greece and Russia, where Pentecost falls under Orthodox calculation later, churches are filled with grass and flowers and worshippers stand on green carpets to symbolise the renewal of creation by the Spirit.