The Living Calendar
Why You Can Trust the Calendar
The heart of Gedam is a living liturgical calendar — and a calendar is only as good as it is correct. Here is how Gedam’s is built and proven, in plain terms.
It is computed, not copied
Gedam does not store a fixed list of dates for a single year. It calculates the calendar from the Church’s own rules, so that it is correct in any year you open — past, present, or future.
It follows each church’s own reckoning
The Oriental Orthodox do not all keep one Easter. The Coptic, Ethiopian, and Eritrean churches follow the ancient Alexandrian calculation; the Armenian, Syriac, and Malankara churches keep the modern Easter. Gedam computes both and applies the right one to each tradition. From Easter flow all the movable observances of the year — the Fast of Nineveh, Great Lent, Palm Sunday, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost. The thirteen-month Coptic and Ethiopian calendar is converted to the common calendar exactly, so feasts such as Genna and Timkat fall on the right day every year — including the years when they shift by a day. Each church’s fasts are kept at that church’s own lengths, not borrowed from another.
It is tested
The calculations are checked against the churches’ own published calendars and against the known dates of Easter across many years; the Geʼez calendar is checked against fixed reference points; and the whole calendar is run across entire years to confirm that every single day resolves correctly. Where two independent editions of a church’s readings exist, they are cross-checked against one another. Errors found in source materials are corrected against the Church’s own published texts before anything is shown.
It is honest
Where a finer rule is genuinely uncertain, Gedam does not guess — it asks the Church. Anything still being confirmed is noted rather than presented as settled.
For those who wish to know more, the full method and the record of testing are documented and can be shared on request — write to contact@gedam.app.
Every reading, cited
The calendar is computed. The content is sourced.
Every fast, feast, reading, and saint is drawn from a cited source and never written from memory. See where it all comes from.
View the sources