WHITSUNDAY, or Pentecost(πeντηκoσ∙τη), the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday, one of the principal feasts of the Christian Church, is enumerated among these along with Easter Sunday, Good Friday, and the Sundays throughout the year by Origen (Cont. Cels., viii. 392), and is thus enjoined in the Apostolical Constitutions (v. 20): “After ten days from the Ascension, which from the first Lord’s Day is the fiftieth day, do ye keep a great festival on the day the Lord Jesus sent on us the gift of the Holy Ghost.” The origin of the Anglo-Saxon name of White Sunday, which also occurs in Icelandic, is somewhat obscure, for in the Roman Church the Dominica in Albis (Low Sunday), so called from the white robes then worn by candidates for baptism, has always been the Sunday immediately following Easter. A very probable suggestion is that in northern countries the colder climate made it desirable to postpone the great baptismal festival to a time when the spring season was further advanced.