Nativity of the Lord

Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, the Word made flesh. Luke tells of the census, the manger, the shepherds, and the angels’ Gloria. Matthew tells of Joseph’s obedience, the magi who will arrive later, and Herod’s fear. John tells neither stable nor star. He tells the beginning: the Word was with God and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Roman Church is not content with one of these. She reads them across the Masses of the day so that sentiment about a child never loses the claim that this child is the eternal Son.

December 25 has been the Western date since at least the fourth century. The East long preferred January 6 and later adopted December 25 as well. Calculations that place the birth at the winter solstice, or nine months after a traditional date of the Passion, are part of the history of the calendar. They are not articles of faith. What the Church defines is that the Son of God was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, true God and true man. The date is the Church’s solemnity. The truth of the birth does not depend on proving a Roman festival was displaced, a theory historians still debate and the Creed does not mention.

Christmas is a holy day of obligation everywhere the Latin law of holy days is kept, and in the United States the obligation is never abrogated because the day falls on a Saturday or a Monday. The vigil begins on the evening of December 24. The Mass of the night, the Mass at dawn, and the Mass during the day are three distinct formularies, not three attempts at the same text. Midnight is traditional for the Mass of the night. It is not required. A parish that celebrates the night Mass at ten o’clock has not failed the feast. A Catholic who attends any one of the Christmas Masses, beginning with the vigil, fulfills the obligation. Attending three is devotion, not a triple precept.

The octave runs from December 25 through January 1. Stephen, John, and the Holy Innocents fall inside it and do not cancel it. Christmas Time continues through the Baptism of the Lord. The commercial calendar, which begins Christmas after Thanksgiving and ends it on the morning of December 26, is not the liturgical year. The Church is just starting. The preface of the Nativity says that a new light of God’s glory has shone upon the eyes of our mind, so that, knowing God made visible in Christ, we may be caught up in love of things invisible.

The Mass of the night reads Isaiah 9, “a child is born to us,” Titus on the grace of God appearing, and Luke 2, the shepherds. The Mass during the day reads Isaiah 52, Hebrews 1, “in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,” and the prologue of John. Hebrews 1 and John 1 are why Christmas is a solemnity of the Lord and not a feast of childhood. The Creed is said, and at the words of the Incarnation the Church kneels. The Gloria, which Advent omitted, returns.