Welcome.

This website is a spin-off project from The New Carolers, which was the original host for Wintertide, an Advent Liturgy, which I completed, after several years of tinkering, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and which my family used nightly during Advent to celebrate the season. My oldest son, then two years old at the time, was surprisingly into it all, and long after Advent was completed, he continued to ask to “sing our songs” and “light the candles” and would say “hear our prayer” at random times. I kept having to remind him that Advent was done. Of course, he wasn’t too put off by that.

Maybe he was on to something, I thought. The evening ritual had been very centering, at the end of a long, difficult year. It had been simple enough to establish the habit, not having multiple nightly events every week (partially due to COVID, partially due to being a resident doctor, and partially due to having two young boys). And it was a way to impart important elements of our faith to our sons. So, I began to think ahead and wondered what would it look like to have a brief moment of evening family worship centered around the liturgical calendar, perhaps even some new liturgies, eventually for every season of the year. The task was rather daunting (my wife would say that usually doesn’t stop me). Advent was 4 weeks long, give or take. That left 48 to go. The next season up that I could realistically tackle was Lent. With just a few weeks lead time, I thought what’s the worst that could happen? I don’t get anything finished this year?

And so, Liturgy of the Year is now here, a space to collect what I hope will eventually become a full fledged site with simple liturgical settings for the various seasons of the church calendar. For now, it will be the home for Sojourn, a Lenten Liturgy, as well as the co-home for Wintertide.

As always, please feel free to use these resources however is best for you, your family, your church, your community. Let me know if you have found them helpful at all.

Matt