The Season of Christmas: An Anglican Perspective

The Season of Christmas

The Season of Christmas — sometimes called Christmastide — is the Church’s sustained celebration of the Incarnation. It begins on December 25 and runs for twelve days through January 5, ending on the eve of the Epiphany. Where the culture’s Christmas ends on December 25 or shortly after, the Church’s Christmas begins there and continues for nearly two weeks, filling the days that follow with feasting, with the commemoration of those who died for the child born on Christmas Day, and with the theological reflection that the Nativity demands. The BCP 2019 appoints collects on pages 599–601 and lectionary readings on page 718 for the season.

The Season of Christmas is not only a season of joy. It is a season of honest joy — the kind that does not pretend the world is other than it is. Within the twelve days, the Church honors a martyr (Stephen, December 26), a confessor (John the Apostle, December 27), the first innocent victims of the Incarnation’s consequences (the Holy Innocents, December 28), and the Holy Name of the child himself (the Circumcision and Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, January 1). The cradle and the stones occupy the same season. The light has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it — but the darkness has not quietly withdrawn either. The Christmas season holds all of this together.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

The twelve days of Christmas are December 25 through January 5. January 5 is the Twelfth Day of Christmas — Twelfth Night — the eve of the Epiphany. January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, is not part of the Christmas season but its crown: the feast toward which the twelve days have been moving, the manifestation of the child to the nations, the completion of the Incarnation cycle. The Christmas season does not contain the Epiphany. It points toward it.

The twelve days are a period of continuous feast. No fasting is appointed within them. The Preface of Christmas governs every Eucharist throughout the season. The Christmas collect is used at every service. The season does not diminish or modulate after Christmas Day itself but sustains the same note of joyful celebration through all twelve days. This is the liturgical counterpoint to the cultural pattern, in which the days after Christmas are experienced as anticlimax. The Church’s Christmas does not peak on December 25 and recede. It begins on December 25 and holds.

The BCP 2019 notes on page 600 that the collect and any set of propers for Christmas Day serve for any weekdays between Holy Innocents’ Day (December 28) and the First Sunday of Christmas — a practical provision that ensures the season’s momentum continues through the ordinary weekdays of the twelve days. When Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, the next Sunday is the Second Sunday of Christmas or the Circumcision and Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, depending on the year.

The Feast Days Within the Season

The Christmas season is unusually dense with Red-Letter Holy Days. Four feast days fall within the twelve days, each carrying its own theological weight and its own relationship to the Incarnation celebrated on December 25.

December 26 is the feast of Stephen, Deacon and Martyr — the first Christian martyr, the first to die for the child born the day before. The proximity is deliberate. The Church does not linger in the triumph of the Nativity before confronting what the Nativity costs. Stephen’s feast is the season’s first acknowledgment that the Word made flesh entered a world that would kill him and kill those who bore his name. Red vestments are worn on this day, honoring Stephen as a martyr even within the white Christmas season.

December 27 is the feast of John, Apostle and Evangelist — the Beloved Disciple, the one who outlived all the other apostles and died in old age in Ephesus still bearing witness to what he had seen. John is honored not as a martyr but as a confessor: one who suffered for the faith without being killed for it. White vestments are worn on his feast, as throughout the Christmas season, since the color of Christmas encompasses and interprets the confessor’s witness.

December 28 is the feast of the Holy Innocents — the children of Bethlehem killed by Herod’s soldiers in his attempt to destroy the child. They are the martyrs who died for Christ without knowing it, before they had any capacity to confess or deny the faith. Red vestments are worn on this day as well, honoring them as martyrs. The three days after Christmas present the Church with three types of witness: Stephen the willing martyr, John the suffering confessor, the Innocents who died without choice. All three are held within the Christmas season, because all three are consequences of the Incarnation.

January 1 is the Feast of the Circumcision and Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Eight days after his birth, in accordance with the law of Moses, the child is circumcised and named: Jesus, the name the angel had given before he was conceived. The feast honors both the obedience of the Son — submitting to the covenant sign of Israel on behalf of those he came to redeem — and the name above every name given to him. The BCP 2019 collect on page 600 prays that the Church would faithfully bear his name and worship him with pure hearts according to the New Covenant.

The Christmas Lectionary

The lectionary readings for the Christmas season are found on page 718 of the BCP 2019. Three sets of propers are appointed for Christmas Day itself — the Three Masses of Christmas — and they are the same across all three years of the lectionary cycle. Christmas Day I appoints Isaiah 9:1–7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11–14, and Luke 2:1–14(15–20). Christmas Day II appoints Isaiah 62:6–12, Psalm 97, Titus 3:4–7, and Luke 2:(1–14)15–20, shifting the focus to the shepherds’ return. Christmas Day III appoints Isaiah 52:7–12, Psalm 98, Hebrews 1:1–12, and John 1:1–18 — the theological crown of the day, the Incarnation stated in its fullest terms.

The First Sunday of Christmas is fixed across all three years: Isaiah 61:10—62:5, Psalm 147:12–20, Galatians 3:23–4:7, and John 1:1–18. Galatians 4:4–5 is the great Pauline statement of the Incarnation’s purpose: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4–5, ESV) The Christmas season’s lectionary keeps returning to this exchange: the Son born under the law so that those under the law might receive adoption. The Incarnation is not merely a beautiful story about a baby. It is the mechanism of salvation, precisely calibrated to accomplish what nothing else could.

The Second Sunday of Christmas is fixed in its Old Testament and Epistle across all three years: Jeremiah 31:7–14, Psalm 84, and Ephesians 1:3–14. The Gospel varies: Luke 2:41–52 in Year A (the finding of Jesus in the temple), Matthew 2:13–23 in Year B (the flight to Egypt), and Luke 2:22–40 in Year C (the Presentation and Simeon’s song), with Matthew 2:1–12 available as an alternative in all three years. Ephesians 1:3–14 is one of the New Testament’s most exalted texts: the blessing of God who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, having predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ. The Second Sunday of Christmas reads the Nativity through the lens of eternity — the child in the manger as the fulfillment of a purpose chosen before the foundation of the world.

The BCP 2019 Collects and Preface

The First Sunday of Christmas collect on page 600 prays: “Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, kindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” The collect names the season’s movement: the light of the incarnate Word poured upon the Church is meant to be kindled in hearts and to shine forth in lives. The Christmas season is not merely a commemoration of something that happened. It is the reception of a light that transforms those who receive it.

The Second Sunday of Christmas collect on page 601 presses into the deepest theology of the Incarnation: “O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” The collect names the double wonder: creation and restoration. The dignity of human nature was established in creation and lost in the fall. The Incarnation is its restoration — the Son humbling himself to share our humanity so that we might share his divine life. This is the Athanasian formula at the heart of Christmas theology: he became what we are so that we might become what he is.

The Preface of Christmas, found on page 152 of the BCP 2019, governs every Eucharist throughout the season: “Because you gave Jesus Christ, your only Son, to be born for us; who, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary his mother, was made truly man, yet without the stain of sin, that we might be cleansed from sin and given the right to become your children.” (BCP 2019, p. 152) The preface states the purpose of the Incarnation with precision: he was made truly man that we might be cleansed from sin and given the right to become God’s children. The Christmas season is the season of this gift — twelve days of living in the knowledge of what the birth of the Son means for those who receive him.

The Christmas Season in Anglican Worship

White vestments are worn throughout the Christmas season, the color of purity and joy. Red vestments are worn on the feasts of Stephen (December 26) and the Holy Innocents (December 28), honoring both as martyrs even within the white Christmas season. White continues on the feast of John the Apostle (December 27), since John is commemorated as a confessor rather than a martyr. The result across the first four days of Christmas is a sequence of white, red, white, red — a visual embodiment of the season’s honest joy: the light of the Incarnation surrounded by the blood of those who suffered for it.

The crêche — the nativity scene — remains in place throughout the Christmas season. It is not removed on December 26 or at any point before the Epiphany. The season is the twelve days, and the crêche belongs to all of them. What it teaches without a word is the humility of the Incarnation — the one by whom all things were made, laid in a feeding trough because there was no room for him elsewhere. That image is the season’s visual theology, held before the congregation through all twelve days until the Epiphany arrives and the Magi complete the scene.

The Christmas season has been observed in the Church of England since the earliest period of English Christianity and was retained through the Reformation as a period of continuous feast. Cranmer’s first BCP of 1549 provided propers for Christmas and the Christmas season, and every subsequent revision has maintained the season’s structure. The BCP 2019 provides three sets of propers for Christmas Day, collects for the First and Second Sundays of Christmas, the Circumcision and Holy Name, and the full Red-Letter observances of Stephen, John, and the Holy Innocents — ensuring that the twelve days are liturgically as well as culturally distinct.

Observing the Season

The Season of Christmas begins on December 25 and ends on January 5. The BCP 2019 provides collects beginning on page 599 (Christmas Eve) through page 601 (Second Sunday of Christmas), and the lectionary is on page 718.

To observe the season: begin Christmas on December 25, not before. Let Advent do its work of preparation so that Christmas Day is the arrival it is meant to be. Pray the Christmas Day collect from p. 600 on Christmas morning and throughout the week. Observe the feast days within the season: read about Stephen on the 26th and receive the season’s first note of martyr’s red within the white Christmas joy. Read about John on the 27th and sit with the confessor’s long witness. Read about the Holy Innocents on the 28th and let the Church’s honest grief be part of the season’s celebration.

Let the crêche remain until Epiphany. On January 1, observe the Circumcision and Holy Name — the name above every name, given on the eighth day, the name at which every knee shall bow. Pray the Second Sunday of Christmas collect on p. 601 and let the double wonder — creation and restoration, the Incarnation as the mechanism of adoption — be the theological meditation of the season’s final days. And on January 5, Twelfth Night, let the season end with gratitude: twelve days of feasting, twelve days of light, twelve days of living in the knowledge that the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us.

Conclusion

The Season of Christmas is the Church’s annual twelve-day feast in honor of the most astonishing event in human history: the eternal Son of God taking flesh and being born of the Virgin Mary. It is a season of genuine, sustained, honest joy — joy that knows about Stephen’s stones and Herod’s soldiers and still sings, because the light that has come into the world is a light that darkness cannot overcome. The twelve days are not a coda to Christmas Day. They are Christmas itself — the Church’s full reception of the gift that Advent prepared it to receive, held open for twelve days before the Epiphany completes the cycle and the nations arrive at the manger.

“O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 2019, p. 601)