Education Questions and Answers
What is meant by a red letter day and where did it originate from?
Answers:
A red letter day (sometimes hyphenated as red-letter day) is any day of special significance.
The term originates from Medieval church calendars. Illuminated manuscripts often marked initial capitals and highlighted words in red ink, known as rubrics. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed the saint's days, feasts and other holy days, which came to be printed on church calendars in red. The term came into wider usage with the appearance in 1549 of the first Book of Common Prayer in which the calendar showed special holy days in red ink.
Back in the days when newspapers were the only media, when there was a particularly huge story, they would print the headline in red ink.
A red letter day (sometimes hyphenated as red-letter day) is any day of special significance.
The term originates from Medieval church calendars. Illuminated manuscripts often marked initial capitals and highlighted words in red ink, known as rubrics. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed the saint's days, feasts and other holy days, which came to be printed on church calendars in red. The term came into wider usage with the appearance in 1549 of the first Book of Common Prayer in which the calendar showed special holy days in red ink
"The term dates from old calendars in which 'high days and holidays' (i.e. Holy Days) were marked in red. I believe that this practice was originally used in the First Book of Common Prayer (dating from 1549 with major contributions from Thomas Cranmer) in which every Sunday, Festival (e.g. Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsun etc.) and important Saint's day was marked in red. The tradition continued in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which incidentally has contributed so much to the English language. Of course, none of this precludes you marking your calendar with your own red letter days!
(Extract from the Guardian's 'Notes and Queries' site, article by Tony Crook)"
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