Is Holy Wednesday a public holiday?

No. It has no legal standing found anywhere, and in the national holiday registers checked it does not appear at all: the Holy Week public holidays start the next day, with Maundy Thursday.

Is Holy Wednesday the same as Ash Wednesday?

No. Ash Wednesday opens Lent, while Holy Wednesday falls in the final week of it, a few days before Easter. Both are moveable, which is part of why they get confused.

Why is it called Spy Wednesday?

Because in the gospel account Judas Iscariot was, from that Wednesday onward, secretly seeking an opportunity to hand Jesus over. The name is a popular one rather than a liturgical title, and the earliest printed examples come from Irish newspapers.

Holy Wednesday

Next celebratedWednesday, March 24, 2027

The Wednesday of Holy Week, on which Christian churches read the account of Judas Iscariot agreeing to hand Jesus over, and on which Eastern churches also remember the woman who anointed him at Bethany.

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Last updated August 19, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEWednesday Before Easter

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYReligion

SUBCATEGORYChristian

ORIGIN

Religious Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

“No founder is recorded. The earliest close account of the day is a pilgrim's, written about Jerusalem in the late fourth century.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

No founder, and a record that opens in fourth-century Jerusalem

Holy Wednesday has no founder and no establishing document. It is simply the Wednesday of Holy Week, and the earliest detailed account of how it was kept comes from the pilgrim Egeria, who recorded the practice of the church in Jerusalem in the late fourth century.

Read Egeria's Jerusalem accountvia users.ox.ac.uk

INTRO

A betrayal on one Wednesday, a fast on most Wednesdays

Orthodox Christians fast on most Wednesdays of the year, and the Orthodox Church in America explains that habit by pointing at a single Wednesday in Holy Week. This is that Wednesday. Both halves of the church read Judas Iscariot's bargain aloud on it.

Hardly anywhere is it a day off. Spain reserves its Holy Week holidays for the Thursday and the Friday, and the Philippines begins its own on the Thursday. Inside the churches the day is anything but ordinary.

Almost everything else about the day they do differently. Eastern and Western Christians mark it under different names, with different services, and in most years on different dates.

ORIGINS

Holy Wednesday history

CHAPTER 01

What a pilgrim saw in Jerusalem

Egeria was a pilgrim, and almost everything else about her is guesswork. What survives is her account of the church in Jerusalem, and in it the Wednesday of Holy Week is a service held after dark. A priest read out the passage in which Judas Iscariot went to the authorities and settled his price.

It is the reaction she recorded most exactly. When the passage had been read, Egeria wrote, there is such a moaning and groaning of all the people that no one can help being moved to tears at that hour. Nobody had instituted the day; the earliest record of it is a record of people weeping.

CHAPTER 02

The candles and the clatter

The Western church gave the Wednesday a service of its own by borrowing one. Tenebrae was the night office of the last three days of Holy Week, sung ahead of time on the afternoon before, and the Catholic Encyclopedia judges that by the thirteenth century it was probably starting at Rome on the Wednesday, at four or five in the afternoon. Candles stood on a hearse and were put out gradually as the office went on.

The hearse itself was never standardised. Durandus recorded churches using as many as seventy-two candles and others using nine or seven, while the English Sarum Ordinal called for twenty-four and a twenty-fifth kept alight behind the altar. The noise that ends the service began as stage management, a knock from the master of ceremonies to send the ministers back to the sacristy, and was only later read as the convulsion of nature that followed Christ's death.

CHAPTER 03

Rome moved the clock

The Wednesday office survived for centuries and did not outlast 1955. That year the Sacred Congregation of Rites ruled that, for the Triduum, Matins and Lauds are not anticipated in the evening but said in the morning, at the proper hour. Cathedrals were given one exception, because the Chrism Mass already occupied Thursday morning.

The same decree left the Divine Office of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at its usual hours. What moved was the borrowed office that had filled the Wednesday afternoon.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Nicaea sets the moving rule

The First Ecumenical Council fixed Pascha to the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, with March 21 taken as the invariable equinox.

The calendars part company

The Western church adopted the Gregorian calendar. The Orthodox churches kept calculating on the Julian, and the two Holy Wednesdays began to fall in different weeks.

Spy Wednesday reaches print

A Dublin newspaper's report of the Quarter Sessions used the phrase as an ordinary date, in evidence about a jaunting car stolen on Spy Wednesday night.

Ireland fasts on milk and butter

The Archbishop of Tuam's Lenten pastoral told the faithful that even milk and butter were not allowed on Ash Wednesday, Spy Wednesday and Good Friday.

Rome ends the anticipated office

A decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites ordered Matins and Lauds of the Triduum said in the morning rather than on the evening before.

Both traditions agree for once

Western and Orthodox churches kept Holy Wednesday on the same date, April 16, before separating again the following year.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Holy Wednesday Matters

Calendar

The difference is calendars and lunar tables, not theology.

The day moves because Easter moves, and the two traditions still compute Easter on different calendars. The Orthodox churches reckon Pascha on the Julian calendar, which in practice means Pascha cannot fall before April 3. A consultation held at Aleppo in 1997 concluded that the difference comes from the calendars and the lunar tables in use, and not from any theological disagreement between Eastern and Western Christians. The most visible split in the churches' shared week turns out to be arithmetic.

Precedence

Nothing else on the calendar may push it aside

In the Roman Rite the day is protected by rank. The 1988 circular letter Paschale Solemnitatis quotes the general norms of the liturgical year: the days of Holy Week, from Monday to Thursday inclusive, have precedence over all other celebrations. The same paragraph adds that baptisms and confirmations are not fittingly celebrated on those days. It is a rule about what has to give way, not a claim that this Wednesday outranks Easter.

Preaching

The churches police how this week is preached

The day's gospel puts a betrayer at the centre of the story, and the US Catholic bishops who publish the lectionary have written about what that has been used to justify. Their 1988 guidelines on preaching warn that, given the history of the "Christ-killer" charge, a strong and careful homiletic stance is necessary, and ask preachers to give the passion narratives a proper context. The same document counts the betrayal by Judas among the elements all four gospel accounts share.

BY THE NUMBERS

Holy Wednesday by the Numbers

15: Candles on a Tenebrae stand
259: Roman lectionary number for the day
30: Pieces of silver in Judas's bargain
13: Days between the Julian and Gregorian calendars
7: Priests ideally serving Holy Unction

GOOD TO KNOW

Holy Wednesday Around the World

Ireland

The earliest known appearances of the name Spy Wednesday are Irish, and nineteenth-century Irish bishops ranked the day with the strictest fasts of the year. The Bishop of Limerick's regulations forbade milk and butter on Ash Wednesday, Spy Wednesday and Good Friday.

Spain

Nine penitential brotherhoods walk Seville on Miercoles Santo, among them El Carmen, La Sed, San Bernardo, El Baratillo and Los Panaderos.

Czech Republic

Czechs call it Skareda streda, Ugly Wednesday, for the same reason English speakers say Spy Wednesday. Households baked pastries in the shape of the letter J, for Jidas, the Czech Judas, and served food made deliberately unsightly, such as potato pancakes torn up to look worse.

Greece and the Orthodox world

The Matins of Holy Wednesday is sung a day early, on Tuesday evening, and carries a hymn that L'Osservatore Romano attributes to Cassia, a ninth-century abbess, poet and composer in Constantinople.

Philippines

In Baliuag, Bulacan, hundreds of giant carrozas carrying life-sized images of the Passion parade out of San Agustin Church, around the town and back, every Holy Wednesday.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Spy Wednesday is the church's official name for the day.

The truth

The books that govern the day call it something else. The Roman lectionary heads it "Wednesday of Holy Week", and so does the Church of England's Common Worship lectionary. The popular name reached print through Irish newspapers, not through liturgy.

The myth

All Christians keep Holy Wednesday on the same day.

The truth

They usually do not. In 2026 Western churches keep it on April 1 and the Orthodox churches on April 8. In 2027 the gap widens to five weeks, March 24 against April 28.

The myth

The day is only about Judas.

The truth

In the Orthodox services he is deliberately paired with the woman who poured ointment on Christ's head at the house of Simon the leper. The hymns set a sinful woman who is saved against a chosen apostle who is lost.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe Holy Wednesday

Read the passages the churches read

Both Western traditions set Isaiah 50:4-9a for the day and then part ways on the gospel. The Roman lectionary reads Matthew's account of the bargain, while Common Worship reads John's account of Jesus naming his betrayer at supper.

FIND

Find a Tenebrae service

The office of shadows is still offered on this day. The Episcopal Church's Book of Occasional Services provides Tenebrae for Wednesday in Holy Week, with the candles extinguished one by one, the last carried away and hidden, and a sudden loud noise before it is brought back.

KEEP

Keep the fast that belongs to the day

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese marks Holy Wednesday a strict fast: no meat, fish, oil, wine, dairy or eggs. That fast runs alongside the last Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts of Lent, which falls on the Wednesday morning.

Go to the anointing

Orthodox parishes serve the Mystery of Holy Unction on the afternoon or evening of Great and Holy Wednesday. It is offered for healing of soul and body, and it is not reserved for the dying: everyone sick in body, mind or spirit is anointed with oil.

MARK

Mark the last full day of Lent

Paschale Solemnitatis puts the end of the Lenten season on the Thursday of Holy Week, with the Easter Triduum beginning at that evening's Mass of the Lord's Supper. Wednesday is therefore the last day of the week lived entirely inside Lent, which is why it carries so much penitential weight.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Holy Wednesday?

1 / 8

What does the "spy" in Spy Wednesday refer to?

Answer

It is the Wednesday of Holy Week, four days before Easter Sunday, so the date changes every year. Western churches keep it on April 1 in 2026 and March 24 in 2027.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

20sources

15primary records

12independently dated

Primary records

Orthodox Church in America

Great and Holy Wednesday

The OCA's own liturgical page for the day, covering the woman who anointed Christ at the house of Simon the leper, Judas's agreement to betray for thirty pieces of silver, and the church's explanation of the weekly Wednesday fast.

Holy Wednesday

Religious Origin

No founder, and a record that opens in fourth-century Jerusalem

What a pilgrim saw in Jerusalem

The candles and the clatter

Rome moved the clock

Nicaea sets the moving rule

The calendars part company

Spy Wednesday reaches print

Ireland fasts on milk and butter

Rome ends the anticipated office

Both traditions agree for once

Nothing else on the calendar may push it aside

The churches police how this week is preached

Ireland

Spain

Czech Republic

Greece and the Orthodox world

Philippines

Read the passages the churches read

Find a Tenebrae service

Keep the fast that belongs to the day

Go to the anointing

Mark the last full day of Lent

How well do you know Holy Wednesday?

What does the "spy" in Spy Wednesday refer to?

When is Holy Wednesday?

Is Holy Wednesday a public holiday?

Is Holy Wednesday the same as Ash Wednesday?

Why is it called Spy Wednesday?

Related holidays

Easter

Holy Monday

Holy Tuesday

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