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Sexagesima (in full, Sexagesima Sunday) is the former name for the penultimate Sunday before Ash Wednesday in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, and also in that of some Protestant denominations, particularly those with Anglican origins.
The name "Sexagesima" is derived from the Latin sexagesimus, meaning "sixtieth," and appears to be a back-formation of Quinquagesima, the term formerly used to denote the last Sunday before Easter (the latter name alluding to the fact that there are fifty days between that Sunday and Easter, if one counts both days themselves in the total). Through the same process, the Sunday before Sexagesima Sunday was formerly known as Septuagesima Sunday, and marked the start of the "pre-Lenten" sub-season which eventually became the time for carnival celebrations throughout Europe, this custom being later exported to places settled and/or colonized by Europeans.
All three of the names once used for the last three Sundays before Lent — Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima — began to fall into disuse when the Second Vatican Council eliminated them from its reformed liturgical calendar, which went into effect in 1970; six years later the churches of the Anglican Communion also dropped them, and today they are typically found only in such traditional publications as almanacs.
See also Ordinary Time.
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