The words, the week and the year

The words

Choosing a tradition gives the congregation its words, and the game uses them everywhere: the panels, the news, the reports, the dilemmas, even the satisfaction factors ("Couldn't hear the khutbah"). The Church screen and its second tab take the tradition's name for itself: Parish, Ward, Synagogue, Islamic center, Temple, Mandir, Gurdwara, Shrine.

The rest follow the same pattern: what's given (the collection, tithes and offerings, a contribution, tzedakah, sadaqah, chanda, dana, dan, incense money, a merit offering), the scripture (the Bible, the Torah, the Qur'an, the sutras, the Tipitaka, the Vedas and Agamas, the Guru Granth Sahib, the norito, the Ofudesaki), the school (Sunday school, Hebrew school, a weekend Islamic school, Dharma School, Bal Vihar, a Punjabi school, pathshala, a Chinese school), and the wider body by name (the diocese, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Office of the marja', the National Jama'at, the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, a Tenrikyo church's parent church). The hall is the fellowship hall in a Christian tradition and the social hall in another, and the entrance hall the narthex in a Christian tradition and the entrance hall in another; where a tradition has its own word, they take it (the langar hall, the bhojanshala, the prasadam hall, the banquet hall; a synagogue's or mosque's lobby, the Latter-day Saints' foyer), and so do the fees for rites households ask for (puja fees, path offerings, prayer offerings, dakshina) and the lamps renewed each year (lamps of brightness). Where a thing doesn't arise, it isn't shown: communion and baptism, paraments, the Christmas and Easter specials, and the balance of Word and Sacrament in Beliefs are a Christian tradition's, so a congregation of any other faith sees no communion toggle or baptism rows, and can change only its formality in Beliefs.

People carry names from the community's heritages: a Sunni center draws South Asian, Arab, African American, Somali, Bosnian, and Turkish families; a Vietnamese temple, Vietnamese ones; a Hindu temple, South Indian, North Indian, Gujarati, Bengali, and Nepali ones; a gurdwara, Punjabi Sikh ones, the men Singh and many of the women Kaur; a Jain center, Gujarati and Marwari ones; a Hawaii shrine, Japanese Hawaiian ones; a folk temple, Taiwanese, Cantonese, or Fujianese ones, as its variant is; a synagogue, Jewish American ones; a church, the game's general American mix. A household's given and family names belong together, and its babies and spouses come from its own heritage. Newcomers who come from another congregation (about half do) come from one of the same faith, and one in twenty from any faith at all.

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The week

Each tradition's main gathering is the one the rest of the guide calls "the service": the one that's preached at, greeted at, given at, and that moves how people feel. Choosing a tradition of another faith (or one that keeps daily services or services timed by the sun) sets up its whole expected week at once.

• Churches mostly gather on Sunday morning: one service or two (an 8 o'clock, a contemporary service), with Sunday school first in many, the Catholic Mass on Saturday evening too, and a Wednesday prayer meeting or a Sunday evening service where the tradition keeps one. The Adventists meet on Saturday, with Sabbath School first; the Witnesses at the weekend and on Thursday.
• Synagogues gather on Shabbat morning. Reform and Reconstructionist congregations also hold a Friday evening service at 6:30; Conservative, Orthodox, and Chabad welcome Shabbat with Kabbalat Shabbat at candle-lighting. The traditional movements add weekday minyanim: Shacharit in the morning (8:00 on Sunday), Minchah and Ma'ariv around sunset, and Minchah and seudah shlishit late on Shabbat afternoon.
• Mosques gather for Jumu'ah, the Friday midday prayer, half an hour after Dhuhr (with a second Jumu'ah if you need the room twice), and pray the five daily prayers together: Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha, all timed by the sun. Friday's Jumu'ah takes Dhuhr's place, so a Sunni center keeps 34 daily prayers a week besides it, and in Ramadan taraweeh each night after Isha (as the Ahmadis do too). A Twelver Shia center's main gathering is Thursday night's Du'a Kumayl; Jumu'ah and a combined Maghrib and Isha are optional. The Ahmadis hold Jumu'ah at 1:00; the W. Deen Mohammed community adds a Sunday ta'leem; the Nation of Islam gathers for the Sunday Message, with study meetings and the FOI and MGT classes through the week.
• Buddhist temples and centers mostly gather on Sunday morning: the Shin service, the gongyo meeting, the chanting service with its memorial, the Chinese temple's dharma function and its vegetarian lunch, the Theravada observance and the dana meal before noon, the Tibetan practice. A Soto Zen center sits on Sunday morning with a dharma talk, and keeps zazen at dawn (Monday to Saturday) and at dusk (Monday to Friday).
• Hindu temples keep the deities' day whether anyone comes or not. A community temple is open for darshan from early morning until evening, busiest at the weekend, with the morning abhishekam and the evening arati as daily services and a Sunday abhishekam, with the canteen's lunch, as its main gathering. ISKCON keeps six aratis a day from 4:30 in the morning and gathers for the Sunday Feast at five; BAPS holds its sabha on Sunday afternoon, an ISSO temple on Saturday evening, each with the artis daily and darshan open between. The Indo-Caribbean mandir and the Arya Samaj hold a Sunday-morning service with lunch after; the Vedanta Society a Sunday lecture at eleven and vespers each evening; Chinmaya Mission its Sunday satsang beside Bala Vihar; SRF a Sunday service and meditations; a Sathya Sai center its bhajans on Thursday evening.
• The gurdwara opens its doors from 7:30 in the morning to 7 at night for anyone to come and bow, with Prakash and Asa di Var at five in the morning, Rehras at sunset, and Kirtan Sohila as the Guru Granth Sahib is laid to rest; its main gathering is the Sunday diwan, from nine until two with people coming and going, and langar after it; on the other days a smaller langar is served at midday.
• A Jain center is open all day for darshan and puja, with the aarti each evening; Sunday's puja and talk end in a lunch a family sponsors, and through Paryushana the vyakhyan is held every morning. Jain Vishva Bharati gathers on Saturday morning for Preksha meditation.
• A Shinto shrine is open for visits from eight to five, and keeps its monthly rites on the 1st and the 15th; it holds no weekly service at all, its week being its open hours (Worship and the year). A Konko church holds a Sunday service and keeps mediation through the week; a Tenrikyo church a Sunday morning service, with services morning and evening every day and its monthly service on the third Sunday.
• Chinese temples: a folk temple is open every day for incense, with no weekly service, its rites held on its great days; a Daoist temple's week is its tai chi classes, with Sunday's practice and chanting; a Yiguandao hall holds a Sunday Tao meeting with lunch, and offers incense morning and evening.
• Latter-day Saint wards keep a two-hour Sunday block: sacrament meeting, then classes. On General Conference Sundays (the first Sundays of April and October) and stake conference Sundays (the third Sundays of March and September) the ward holds no meetings of its own.

A day of rest

Where a tradition keeps a day of rest, it's kept as a span, not a calendar day: Shabbat runs from candle-lighting on Friday (18 minutes before sunset) to nightfall on Saturday (when the sun is 8.5° below the horizon), worked out for each week at the congregation's location. The Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath runs sunset to sunset in the same way. Weddings move to Sunday wherever Saturday afternoon falls in a kept Sabbath, and a funeral is never held in it. A Saturday congregation that holds a main service on Sunday instead feels it: −0.12 to everyone there.

Services timed by the sun

A service can be set by a moment of the sun rather than the clock: sunrise, solar noon, sunset, nightfall, candle-lighting, or one of the five prayer times. The prayer times follow the ISNA convention used across North America: Fajr and Isha when the sun is 15° below the horizon, Dhuhr just after noon, Maghrib just after sunset, and Asr by the length of a shadow (once its length past noon's, or twice for the Hanafi school, as the Hanafi variant and the Ahmadis pray it, up to an hour or more later). They're worked out for the congregation's region (see Rooms, materials, styles and lots), so Maghrib in Chicago comes before five in January and after eight in July, and Jumu'ah moves with the clocks. Each tradition's page in Every tradition: services and what they need gives every such service's times in Chicago in January and in July.

In Church → Services a main service timed by the sun shows today's time, with a Clock time button to fix it to the clock instead. The schedule's gap rule is checked for every week of the year, so two services that only clash in midsummer are caught.

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Daily services

The daily prayers, the weekday minyanim, the morning and evening sittings, a Hindu temple's aratis, a gurdwara's morning and evening prayers, and Tenrikyo's morning and evening services are daily services: short ones most people don't come to (no Christian tradition keeps them). A congregation can keep up to 42 a week, besides its 8 main services. Church → Services lists them under Daily services, a row for each, with a chip for each day it's held.

• People decide 15 minutes before (90 before a main service), and come one by one, not as a household: adults and teenagers (13 and up), each at a small share of their usual chance (from 4% for Fajr to 35% for an Orthodox Kabbalat Shabbat). The retired come twice as often; people of working age half as often on a weekday between nine and five.
• There's no welcome, no newcomers, no offering, sermon, communion, rite, ride, or coffee, and no volunteers on duty. A daily service doesn't move anyone's satisfaction, for better or worse, and its report is kept apart from the main services' (the last 70), so the weekly reports and graphs are the main services'.
• Pacing: at normal speed the half hour either side of a main service plays at a minute a second, as always, but a daily service and the ten minutes either side pass at 20 game minutes a second, without the "slowed for the service" notice. To watch them all at a minute a second, turn on Watch every service at a minute a second in Settings. It's saved with your settings, not the game.

Open hours

Some congregations don't gather so much as receive: families come to a Hindu temple for darshan when they like, anyone may walk into a gurdwara to bow, a Jain comes to do the puja, a shrine's or a folk temple's visitors come one by one, and a Konko minister sits at the mediation seat all day. These are open hours: a window, from half an hour to fourteen, through which members and regulars come at their own time (alone, or a household together where the tradition has it so) and stay about twenty minutes. Visitors who don't belong come too, many more on a great day: most are counted, give something, and go, and a few become newcomers, who settle in after six visits rather than three. A visit counts a quarter as much as a main service. Worship and the year has the details.

The minyan

Some prayers need a quorum. Conservative and Reconstructionist congregations count ten adults; Orthodox and Chabad congregations (and the Conservative traditional variant) count ten men; Reform congregations don't count. As each service begins, everyone there aged 13 and up (men only, where it's ten men) is counted. With fewer than ten, the prayers that need a minyan can't be said: at a main service everyone feels it, −0.08 ("No minyan: too few to read the Torah or say Kaddish"). The weekday minyanim are counted too, though a daily service moves no one's satisfaction either way. A small traditional shul lives or dies by its regulars: count your men of 13 and up before you count anything else.

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The year

Each tradition keeps its own year, and the game reckons it with the calendar its people use, so outside the Western church most holy days move against the Western calendar from year to year:

• The church year: Western churches (Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Pentecostal) keep the Western calendar, some its whole round from Advent to Pentecost, others little more than Christmas and Easter; the Orthodox keep the Eastern, with Pascha by the Julian reckoning (never earlier than Western Easter) and their strict fasts. Friends keep no church year, and the Witnesses only the Memorial. Only the church year has liturgical colours and paraments (see Worship and the year).
• The Hebrew year: the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, and Yom Kippur), Sukkot and Simchat Torah, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Shavuot, Tisha B'Av, and the modern days of remembrance. Conservative, Orthodox, and Chabad congregations keep two festival days; Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, one. Chabad adds its own days (Yud-Tes Kislev, Yud Shevat, Gimmel Tammuz). Tisha B'Av moves off Shabbat, as it does. The sukkah goes up for Sukkot.
• The Islamic year, by the Umm al-Qura calendar (close to the computed one the Fiqh Council of North America uses): Ramadan (about eleven days earlier each year; once in a generation a date falls twice in one year, and the game keeps both), Laylat al-Qadr, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, the Prophet's birthday, the Night Journey. The Twelver Shia year adds the Muharram majalis and Ashura, Arba'een, the Imams' births and martyrdoms, and Eid al-Ghadir. The Ahmadis add their own days and the Jalsa Salana; the Nation of Islam, Saviours' Day.
• The Buddhist years: the Japanese temples' fixed dates (Hoonko, Hanamatsuri, Obon, Bodhi Day; Soka Gakkai's anniversaries; the Zen center's Rohatsu sesshin); the Theravada year by the moon (Magha Puja, Vesak, Asalha Puja, the rains retreat and Kathina, and a full-moon observance each month), reckoned at Bangkok's time as the Thai and Lao temples do; the Vietnamese lunar year (Tết, the Buddha's birthday, Vu Lan); and the Tibetan year (Losar, Saka Dawa, Lhabab Duchen, and the monthly pujas on the lunar days).
• The Hindu years, lunisolar: months from new moon to new moon, and each festival on its tithi, the lunar day, as it stands at sunrise, at noon, or at midnight, as the festival asks, reckoned at the temple's own location (or in India, where a body keeps India's dates); a leap month's festivals are kept in the regular month. Solar days (Makar Sankranti, a Tamil New Year) come as the sun enters a sign of the sidereal zodiac. Diwali (Deepavali), Navaratri, Maha Shivaratri, Holi (Phagwah, the Indo-Caribbean mandir's great public day), Janmashtami (ISKCON's greatest day), and Annakut at the Swaminarayan New Year. The Vedanta Society keeps Christmas Eve and Easter beside Durga Puja and Kali Puja; SRF's year is on fixed dates, its greatest the all-day Christmas meditation; a Sathya Sai center keeps Sai Baba's birthday and Guru Purnima.
• The Sikh year, by the original Nanakshahi calendar of 2003, which fixes most gurpurabs to Western dates and keeps three lunar (Guru Nanak's gurpurab, Bandi Chhor Divas, and Hola Mohalla), or, in the variant, the SGPC's lunar dates, reckoned at Amritsar. Vaisakhi and Guru Nanak's gurpurab are the year's crowds, each marked by an Akhand Path; the gurpurabs are celebrated on the nearest weekend.
• The Jain year, lunisolar too, reckoned in India: for the Shvetambara, Paryushana's eight days in late summer, ending in Samvatsari, the year's greatest day; for the Digambara, Das Lakshana's ten, ending in Anant Chaturdashi; Mahavir Jayanti, and Diwali as Mahavir's nirvana.
• The Shinto years: the shrine's New Year's first visit (hatsumode), which brings thousands over the first three days of January, Setsubun on the eve of spring (by the sun: the day before it reaches 315°), the 7-5-3 rite in November, and the autumn grand festival; Konko's Spring and Fall Grand Ceremonies and thirty dawns of Winter Special Prayer; Tenrikyo's Spring and Autumn Grand Services, Oyasama's birthday, and a monthly service.
• The Chinese lunar year, its months from new moon to new moon at China's or Taiwan's time, with the 1st and the 15th of every month counted even in a leap month, and the solar terms (Qingming, the winter solstice) by the sun. A folk temple's Lunar New Year's Eve (its doors open at midnight for the first incense), its god's birthday, and the Ghost Festival; the Daoist Three Officials' days; Yiguandao's four Grand Ceremonies to the Mother; the Chinese Buddhist temple's New Year, the Buddha's birthday, Ullambana in the filial month, and the Water and Land.

The biggest days fill the house: Christmas and Easter in a church; at a synagogue the High Holy Days, two and a half to three times the usual crowd, when those who don't belong buy seats where the synagogue sells them (see Giving); Eid al-Fitr, Ashura, Obon, Vesak, Tết, and Kathina; Diwali, Janmashtami at ISKCON, Vaisakhi, Samvatsari, the shrine's New Year, and the Chinese New Year. The greatest are held as services of their own (Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur, the Eid prayer, a Shia center's Ashura majlis, Diwali and Maha Shivaratri at a Hindu temple, Samvatsari at a Jain center, the folk temple's New Year's Eve and its god's birthday, the Grand Ceremonies and Services of Yiguandao and Tenrikyo, and the Water and Land), drawing the day's crowd and its newcomers; other holy days lift the regular services near them. Households that have fallen away come home at the year's great days: Christmas and Easter in most churches, and where there's no church year, the year's biggest days, at most once a month.

Seasons without weddings. Some seasons and holy days bar weddings: the Orthodox and Coptic fasts; the Omer (until Lag BaOmer) and the Three Weeks, the festivals and Yom Kippur; the Shia Muharram and Safar, to Arba'een; chaturmas, the four months of the rains, at a North Indian or Swaminarayan temple; Paryushana and Samvatsari, and Das Lakshana; and a folk temple's ghost month. Weddings that would fall in them aren't booked. In a strict fast, meals cost more and fewer stay. Prompt burial. Where a tradition buries promptly (the Jewish and most Muslim traditions), a funeral is held the next day, or the first after it that isn't Shabbat or a holy day that bars it, not five days later.

The new faiths' calendars were checked against published almanacs: 62 of 64 Hindu festival dates for American cities, every SGPC date, every Jain test date, and every solar term and Setsubun from 2021 to 2030. Where American congregations celebrate a festival on the nearest weekend rather than its day, as many temples and gurdwaras do, the tradition's calendar moves it there, and the crowd comes then.

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