Coptic Festivals

The Egyptian Coptic Festival

The main Christian festivals

Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and the Annunciation are the main Coptic-festivals of the year and all are celebrated by Copts, with Easter being the most important. Saints’ days also feature strongly and, as with Islamic feasts, they are usually celebrated with a lively moulid.

The Moulid of St Damyanah

The main saints’ days include the Moulid of St Damyanah, the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul and various moulids of the Virgin and St George which take place throughout August.

The spring festival

The spring festival of Sham an-Nessim is celebrated by both Muslims and Christians with family picnics of painted eggs and salted fish.

Coptic Calendar

While some Coptic festivals correspond to the Julian calendar, others rely on the solar Coptic one. This calendar has 13 months, 12 of 30 days each and an intercalary month at the end of the year of 5 or 6 days, depending on whether it is a leap year or not.

Easter

This is the most important date in the Coptic calendar. However, it can differ by up to a month from the date of the Orthodox church’s festival.