Christmas season

The Christmas season lasts from Christmas Day until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

December 25	Christmas Day
January 1	Octave of Christmas; Solemnity of Mary Mother of God
December 25 - January 5	Twelve Days of Christmas
January 6	Epiphany
Sunday after Epiphany	Baptism of the Lord

The Twelve Days of Christmas

25 December	1
26	2
27	3
28	4
29	5
30	6
31	7
1 January	8
2	9
3	10
4	11
5	12

Some traditions start the count on December 26 and see January 6 as the Twelfth Day.

• Snopes: "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Snopes says that the legend of encoding the catechism in the song is false. Others disagree. Such is life! The first English version of the song, possibly derived from a French original, appeared in 1780. The allegation that it was a Jesuit code intended to confound English persecutors dates to the 1990s.

• Wikipedia.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree	Jesus Himself.
2 Turtle doves	Old and New Testaments
3 French hens	Trinity, Three Supernatural Virtues (faith, hope, and love)
4 Colly birds	The four evangelists
5 Gold rings	Pentateuch
6 Geese-a-laying	Six days of Creation
7 Swans-a-swimming	Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit
8 Maids-a-milking	Beatitudes (Matthew's version)
9 Ladies dancing	Nine fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords-a-leaping	Ten Commandments
11 Pipers piping	Eleven faithful apostles.
12 Drummers drumming	Twelve articles in the Apostles' Creed.

• A delightful treatment of what life would be like with all these odd presents. The text introduction to the recording wrongly identifies it as "The Twelve Days to Christmas. The Twelve Days, of course, come AFTER Christmas and before Epiphany.

Xmas

The first letter of this ancient abbreviation is not the English character "X" but the Greek character Chi. It is the first letter of "Christos" in Greek: Χριστος. People who use this abbreviation (as I did in the pie chart of the liturgical year) are not "Xing" Christ out of Christmas; they are going back to the original language of the New Testament and to the earliest days of Christianity to find a convenient symbol for Christ.

This is an example of the problems associated with transliteration.

Historical roots

Roman solar connection

• It seems that the birth of Jesus was not celebrated as a separate feast until the 4th century or so. The East has preserved an earlier tradition linking the birthday of Jesus with the Baptism of the Lord (Theophany, January 6--see Epiphany).
• Dies Natalis Solis Invicti: Roman feast of Sol Invictus, "The Unconquerable Sun." The pun on "Sun/Son" does not exist in Latin, where the two words are "filius" and "sol."
• Saturnalia.
• March 25-->December 25.

Eastern vs. Western calendars

Some data

• Julian Calendar.
• Gregorian Calendar.
• Revised Julian Calendar

"The Revised Julian calendar or, less formally, New Calendar, is a calendar, originated in 1923, which effectively discontinued the 340 years of divergence between the naming of dates sanctioned by those Eastern Orthodox churches adopting it and the Gregorian calendar that has come to predominate worldwide. In 2800 the two calendars will diverge again, though more slowly than the Julian and Gregorian do. This calendar replaced the Ecclesiastical Calendar based on the Julian Calendar in use by the Eastern Orthodox Church since the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325 AD.[1] The Revised Julian Calendar aligned its dates with the Gregorian Calendar proclaimed in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII for adoption by the Roman Catholic Church."

"Because of the differences in calendars in use at that time, the Eastern Church celebrated the Incarnation on what is January 6 on our western calendars (although on their calendars this corresponded to December 24), also as an alternative to pagan solstice festivals. Today, most of the Eastern churches (with the exception of Russian Orthodox) follow the Western practice of celebrating Christmas on December 25. However the Western churches also adopted the January 6 date and used it to observe what is now called Epiphany. In effect, the Eastern churches adopted December 25th from the West and the western churches adopted January 6 from the East, and now both are observed in both traditions, although with different emphases."[1]

"Eastern Orthodox national churches, including those of Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem mark feasts using the older Julian Calendar. December 25 on that calendar currently corresponds to January 7 on the more widely used Gregorian calendar. However, other Orthodox Christians, such as the churches of Greece, Antioch, Alexandria, Albania, Finland and the Orthodox Church in America, among others, began using the Revised Julian Calendar in the early 20th century, which corresponds exactly to the Gregorian Calendar. These Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas on the same day as Western Christianity. Oriental Orthodox churches also use their own calendars, which are generally similar to the Julian calendar. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates the nativity in combination with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. Armenian churches customarily use the Gregorian calendar, but some use the Julian calendar and thus celebrate Christmas Day on January 19, and Christmas Eve on January 18 (according to the Gregorian calendar)."[2]

"The term Old Calendarist refers to any Orthodox Christian or any Orthodox Church body which uses the historic Julian calendar (called "Old Style Calendar" or "Church calendar" or "Old Calendar"), and whose Church body is not in communion with the Orthodox Churches that use the New Calendar. The "Old Calendarists" (who are also sometimes styled "Old Calendar") are to be distinguished from Orthodox Christians or Orthodox Church bodies which are on the Old Calendar. The latter use the historic Julian calendar cited above, but are in communion with the Orthodox Churches that use the New Calendar (the Revised Julian calendar). Thus, to be "Old Calendarist" or "Old Calendar" is not the same thing as being "on the Old Calendar"; and the Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, is not Old Calendarist (or Old Calendar), but it is on the Old Calendar. There are a great many Orthodox Christians who are (or who belong to Churches that are) on the Old Calendar, but far fewer in number are the Orthodox Christians who are Old Calendar or Old Calendarist."[3]

"Eastern Orthodox Liturgics" (Wikipedia) says that three feasts are celebrated on December 25:

• The Nativity, according to the Flesh, of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.
• The Adoration of the Magi: Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar.
• Commemoration of the shepherds in Bethlehem who were watching their flocks and came to see the Lord.

For Old Calendarists, that works out to a Gregorian date of January 7.

January 6, the Eastern Feast of Theophany on the old calendar would then correspond to January 19 on the Gregorian calendar.

In tabular form

In this table, I attempt to sort out the data given above. I am not a calendrist and would be happy to revise this as needed to make it more accurate. The purpose of this table is to attempt show on what GREGORIAN date the Orthodox churches celebrate these feasts. All dates here are expressed in GREGORIAN terms.
Feast	Gregorian	Julian	Revised Julian Calendar
Nativity of Our Lord	December 25	January 7	December 25
Epiphany--Visit of the Magi	January 6	(Combined with Nativity)	(Combined with Nativity)
Theophany--Baptism of the Lord	January 6	January 19	January 6

Some reflections

The development of different liturgical and calendric traditions seems to me to stem, in part, from the difficulties of communication in the early Church. Local customs took root without being compared to or coordinated with other regional customs and traditions.

The Christmas tradition is rooted in the conviction that Jesus was a true human being and therefore that He was born on a particular date, as we all are. The ancient world did not share our mania for exact dates, times, and places. The early Christian bodies wanted to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, but did not have any reliable historical information about what it was. The choice of the winter solstice (December 24 or December 25 on the Julian calendar) was arbitrary but not meaningless. Once the date for celebrating the birth of Jesus was fixed, it was natural to count back nine months to the day and assign March 25 as the date of His conception ("The Feast of the Annunciation" in the Western tradition).

Picking a date to honor the Baptism of the Lord is equally arbitrary, but not meaningless. It is the first revelation of the mystery of the Trinity and the first act in Jesus' public ministry in the synoptic gospels. In the Western tradition, the Baptism of the Lord marks the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of Ordinary Time, when we meditate on everything Jesus said and did before entering into His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

The feasts are meaningful because they are part of the reality of Jesus' incarnate life and are hugely important for understanding Who He is and what He did for us in becoming human and beginning the formation of His first disciples. The arbitrariness of the dates cannot be overcome, but they provide a beautiful rhythm for the Liturgical year.

The solstice is a natural event noted by all the great civilizations in history. In the Northern hemisphere, it is the time of deepest natural darkness and is a turning-point toward spring. I'm very grateful to the unknown religious geniuses who worked out these liturgical dates on our behalf.

The difference in the calendars does not trouble me and I trust that it does not trouble God, either. Calendars are "the work of human hands." Variations in them are perfectly intelligible in principle. Although Christians may be separated by the calendars they use, we share a common instinct to mark these holy days in our hearts and minds and to use them to give greater glory to God.

Gift-giving traditions

• December 6: Feast of St. Nicholas, who gave generously to the poor, especially to some young women in need of a dowry.
• December 25
• January 6: Epiphany in the West, imitating the magi of Matthew's gospel. In the East, this seems to have been the original date for celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Banned in England

... by the Puritans in 1652!

Modern controversies

Christmas and Easter are traditional feasts when lapsed Catholics make a guest appearance at Mass. We hope and pray that they will "come to Church for a change."