Good Friday

Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary, observed by Christians as the somber culmination of Holy Week, two days before Easter Sunday. Despite its solemn religious origin, it has been a statutory bank holiday across the United Kingdom for well over a century, one of the few UK bank holidays with a fixed religious character rather than a purely civic one. The date shifts each year because it is calculated from Easter Sunday, which the Western church fixes as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox, a system formalized at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. Traditional British observance includes church services, particularly the reading of the Passion narrative, and in earlier generations included fasting and abstaining from meat, a practice still followed by many Catholics today. The day is also associated with hot cross buns, spiced sweet buns marked with a cross, whose sale was historically restricted to this day and Christmas under a 16th-century London ordinance. For most people today, Good Friday marks the start of a long Easter weekend, with schools, banks, and many businesses closed until the following Tuesday.