The year, weddings and funerals

Each tradition's year

Every tradition keeps a year of its own, reckoned with the calendar its people use, and the line under the clock shows its season. Synagogues keep the Hebrew calendar and mosques the Islamic one, so their holy days move against the Gregorian year (Ramadan comes about eleven days earlier each year). Hindu and Jain congregations keep lunisolar years, each festival on its lunar day (its tithi) as it stands at sunrise, noon, or midnight, reckoned at the temple's own location or in India, and their solar days by the sun's entry into a sign of the sidereal zodiac. A gurdwara keeps the Nanakshahi calendar's fixed dates or the SGPC's lunar ones. Buddhist temples keep the lunar calendar, the full moons, or their school's own days; Chinese temples the Chinese lunar year, its 1st and 15th every month (leap months too), with Qingming and the solstice by the solar terms; a shrine New Year, Setsubun on the eve of spring, and its own festivals. Most Christian traditions keep a church year: Western churches the Western calendar, the Orthodox the Eastern, with Pascha by the Julian reckoning (never earlier than Western Easter); the Quakers keep none. Only the church year has liturgical colours. Faiths and traditions covers every calendar.

Big days

Some feasts make the congregation more likely to come to a service near them, or to the feast's own service where it has one, and newcomers feel them twice as much: a feast that makes regulars twice as likely to come (up to 98%) brings three times the usual newcomers. The year's great days in every faith:

The lesser feasts' pull on newcomers is capped: over any 30 days they may bring at most half as many newcomers again as the usual 30 days' (counting all of a feast's own service's newcomers, and those a feast day's open hours bring who might come back). The year's great days stand outside the cap (any feast drawing at least as many again as usual, or the calendar's biggest: every row of the table above), so a calendar crowded with lesser days, a shrine's 1st and 15th or a Hindu temple's autumn festivals, doesn't bring a steady stream of newcomers no congregation sees. Who among the congregation comes is unchanged.

On some days a congregation holds none of its own main services: General Conference and stake conference Sundays for a Latter-day Saint ward, which gathers with the wider church instead. Daily services, where a tradition keeps them, still go on.

Special services

Some days have one service for everyone, not just one service's share. Church → Services lists those your tradition keeps, with the next date of each; untick Hold it on any your congregation doesn't hold. Most faiths hold some of their greatest days this way, drawing the day's crowd and its newcomers (a gurdwara, a Shin or Theravada temple, and BAPS keep theirs at the main service nearest them instead):

Where the tradition keeps communion (the Christian ones), each special service has it as your tradition would on that day (every one, where communion is weekly) until you set its Communion toggle, on or off; the congregation's own special services have it too.

Church → Services can add the congregation's own special services too, in any tradition, in a dialog: Add a special service, or Change on one already there. Give it a name, and say how it comes round: one day or yearly on a date (picked from a calendar), a weekday of a month (the third Sunday of October, the last Friday of November), or, where the tradition keeps the church year, so many days from Easter (Ascension is 39 days after; your tradition's own Easter, so Orthodox churches follow Pascha) or from Christmas (Epiphany is 12 days after). Then when it starts, how long it lasts (− and +), and whether it draws fewer than an ordinary week's main service, as many, or more. The dialog says when the next one falls, and nothing changes until you save it.

Most special services are extras, felt half as much as an ordinary service: Easter sunrise, Good Friday, a shrine's monthly rite, Tenrikyo's monthly service, the congregation's own. The year's greatest are felt in full, as an ordinary week's main service is, in every faith alike: Christmas Eve, and a great day's own service (one whose feast draws at least as many again as usual, or the calendar's biggest): Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur, the Eid prayers and Ashura, Diwali's Lakshmi puja, Maha Shivaratri and Janmashtami, Samvatsari, the folk temple's first incense and its god's birthday, the Buddha's birthday, the shrine's autumn grand festival, Tenrikyo's Grand Services, Yiguandao's Grand Ceremonies.

On a great day, people are two and a half to three times as likely to come (up to 98%), and four or five times the usual newcomers come with them: the High Holy Days, the Eid prayer, Diwali, Samvatsari, the folk temple's first incense, Christmas Eve. A building sized for an ordinary week overflows and people stand. It's your best recruiting day of the year if you have the seats and the greeters: consider extra seats (chairs, or more rows of carpet or sheets), and every greeter and usher on duty.

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Dressed for the day

Every faith's year has its seasons and festivals to dress for: the Christian church year's paraments, Advent wreath, Christmas candles, and Easter lilies; a synagogue's Sukkah at Sukkot and its Hanukkah lamp; a mosque's lanterns through Ramadan; Diwali's lamps at a mandir, a derasar, or a gurdwara; a gurdwara's lights for Vaisakhi and the gurpurabs; the New Year couplets at a Chinese temple; the lanterns of Obon, Ullambana, and Vesak; the kadomatsu at a shrine's gate for New Year. Each piece is out (and drawn in the church) only in its season or within a few days of its festival, and the build tray offers it only to its own faiths.

Traditions with seasons to dress for notice whether the building is dressed for them. After each service (and each visit at open hours) they compare the decor the day calls for with what the congregation owns, placed or in the cupboard: from −0.04 with none to +0.04 with all, scaled by the tradition's formality (in full for the most formal traditions, a third for the least). A Christian church's paraments are called for all year; every other piece, in any faith, only in its season, and outside the seasons nothing is called for, so the factor is neither plus nor minus.

Church → Worship lists the decor the season calls for, with a Buy button for anything you're missing. A church's four Christian pieces together cost $3,350, a synagogue's two $2,850, and every other faith's a few hundred dollars a piece: an easy lift at the festivals for any formal congregation. Only a Christian church feels its decor (the paraments) all year; elsewhere it's felt at the festivals alone, and missing it costs nothing the rest of the year.

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Weddings and funerals

• Funerals. When one of the congregation's people dies, the funeral is held there five days later, on a weekday morning; in the Jewish and most Muslim traditions, which bury promptly, it's the next day, or the first after it that isn't the Sabbath or a holy day kept as one. It's held with the tradition's own rite where it has one: the janazah at a mosque, a shiva minyan at a synagogue, the Antim Ardas at a gurdwara, a prarthana sabha at a Jain center, a Buddhist memorial, Konko's celebration of life, a Daoist priest's rites for the dead, a church's memorial service. A Shinto shrine keeps away from death and holds none, nor does a Hindu temple (cremation is elsewhere) or a Sathya Sai center: the family's funeral is held elsewhere, and the congregation earns nothing from it. About 25 come, plus a share of the congregation that grows with how long the person had come (15%, and 3% more a year, up to 80%). The congregation receives $300, and the family feel cared for (+0.05).
• Weddings of your own. Young adults (22 to 34) in the congregation marry at about 5% a year, by their tradition's own rite: a wedding under the chuppah, a nikah, a Hindu wedding (vivaha), the Anand Karaj, a Buddhist wedding before the Buddha, a Shinto wedding before the kami, holy matrimony. Each is on a Saturday afternoon (on Sunday where Saturday is a Sabbath the tradition keeps), unless the tradition holds its weddings at another hour or on other days: a Hindu temple's at nine in the morning and a Sikh Anand Karaj or an Arya Samaj wedding at ten, any day; a Swaminarayan wedding at ten; an Indo-Caribbean wedding on a Sunday morning. Each earns $400. None falls in a strict fast, or in a season or on a holy day that bars weddings (above).
• Rites asked for. Where a tradition keeps rites that families ask for (an archana or a puja at home, an Akhand Path or a Sehaj Path, a snatra puja, a kitō or a house blessing, the 7-5-3 rite, a memorial tablet, Tai Sui protection, a fortune reading), each is booked when the leader, or a member of staff who performs rites, is free, held at the temple, gurdwara, or shrine, at a home, or on the grounds, and paid for at its listed price. A long rite, such as the 48-hour Akhand Path, is kept in shifts. How they're asked for and what they bring is in Money.
• Outside weddings. Couples from outside book a beautiful building, up to one a month for the grandest, for $2,500. How much they want yours depends half on the style's formality and half on the average looks of what stands in the worship room. A Jain marble derasar, a Dravidian temple hall, or a Gothic nave full of handsome furniture is a steady income.

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