holy days: the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ

also known as Christmas day

Dec 24, 2024

A nativity scene in Westminster Cathedral, London. Source: Flickr

Unlike the culture around us, the Church calendar doesn’t start Christmas until Christmas Day, December 25. As previously discussed, the month or so before Christmas Day is called Advent, and it is a season not of feasting and celebration, but rather of prayer, fasting, and preparation for both the first (in memory, at least) and second coming of Jesus, the Messiah.

But the good news, if you’ve been fasting and waiting through Advent, is that Christmas Day is the first of a twelve-day-long celebration! And five of these twelve days are holy days, or red-letter days:

Christmas Day (Principal Feast) - 25th
St. Stephen - 26th
St. John - 27th
The Holy Innocents - 28th
The Circumcision and Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ - Jan 1st

We’ll be looking at each one of these over the course of this period known as Christmastide. But of course, let’s start with Christmas Day itself.

Christmas in church tradition

Christmas Day is the first of seven principal feast days of the Christian year.1 The day, of course, commemorates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians rejoice in Jesus’ incarnation: when he became man to save mankind.2

The story of Jesus’ birth can be found in both Luke chapter 2 and Matthew chapter 1. Here is one of my favorite excerpts:

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”3

How has Christmas traditionally been celebrated? With a feast, of course! Additionally, public worship is usually practiced, either on Christmas day or on Christmas Eve. Ancient cultures considered sundown to be the end of one calendar day and the beginning of the next, so Christmas Eve was literally the evening of Christmas!4 Eventually, though Christmas Eve became the name for the whole day of the 24th.

why is it called Christmas?

What about the name Christmas? The name we’re used to is just a compound of Christ’s Mass, mass being the name of the Eucharistic service in the Roman Catholic church.5 But the “official” name of the feast day is The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a bit of a mouthful, so it’s no wonder a shorter alternative stuck in English. However, many Romance languages (those that came from Latin) use something like “nativity” as their name for the holiday. Think of the Spanish navidad or the Italian Natale. Some even say that the French Noël comes from the same Latin root, though others argue it comes from an old word for news, as in the Good News of Jesus’ birth!

why do we celebrate on December 25?

Whatever we call it, why do we celebrate it on December 25? Jesus probably wasn’t born on that date, after all. The truth of when he was born is sadly lost to history, though there are several theories. It seems that around the third century Christians started to observe a feast in honor of Jesus’ birth, but different dates were chosen in different locales. Over time, December 25 became widely accepted in the Western church.

It’s a common misconception that the date was chosen because of a pagan celebration that occurred on that day, and that the early church wanted to encourage pagans to celebrate Jesus instead. For example, the festival of the birth of Sol Invictus, or the Conquering Sun, is recorded on December 25 in the late third century. However, there is evidence that Christmas had already been celebrated on that date in some Christian communities for up to a century prior, and therefore it is just as likely, perhaps more likely even, that the pagan holiday was put on that date as a reaction to the spread of Christianity.6

Why then was it chosen? One theory is based on an old Jewish belief that a prophet would die on the same day of the year that he was conceived. Jesus’ crucifixion was traditionally believed to be on March 25, so according to this theory he must have been conceived that day as well. Add nine months, and you end up at December 25.

We don’t have any reason to believe that Jesus was born on December 25, but this date has been celebrated for most of the history of the church. Even if it was the day that ancient pagans celebrated the Victorious Sun, we know the truth: that this day, like all the other days of the year, belongs to the one true God who created the very Sun the pagans worshiped.

should we celebrate Christmas?

Today, we hear concerns that Christmas is becoming too commercialized and secularized. A few hundred years ago, though, some had similar concerns. Because Christmas was a principal feast, almost everyone had the day off, and therefore it became a day for drunkenness, revelry, and mischief. In the 17th century, the Puritans reacted by banning all celebration of Christmas. Some still object to the holiday today, even making claims that Christmas symbols such as the Christmas tree are pagan in origin.7

Like any tradition, Christmas can lose its meaning if we let it. But rather than throwing the holiday away, we can be more intentional about remembering the meaning and making it central to how we celebrate it. Make the gift of God with us the focus of the day. And when in doubt, watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas”; Linus will set you straight!