Vigil of the Nativity
J.M.J.

THE FEAST OF CHRISTMAS

By Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B.


We apply the name Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity
of Our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed
Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the
Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other,
as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated
and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the
Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima,
with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over,
seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of
which she received the good tidings from the Angels on that glorious Night
for which the world had been longing four thousand years. The Faithful will
remember that the Liturgy commemorates this long expectation by the four
penitential weeks of Advent.

The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of our Saviour's Nativity by a feast
or commemoration of forty days' duration is founded on the Holy Gospel
itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty
days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity,
went to the Temple, there to fulfil, in most perfect humility, the
ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they
became mothers.


A ROMAN FEAST

The Feast of Mary's Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus'
Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of forty days
as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one,
at least in the Roman Church. And firstly, with regard to our Saviour's
Birth on December 25, we have St John Chrysostom telling us, in his homily
for this Feast, that the Western Churches had, from the very commencement of
Christianity, kept it on this day. He is not satisfied with merely
mentioning the tradition; he undertakes to show that it is well founded,
inasmuch as the Church of Rome had every means of knowing the true day of
our Saviour's Birth, since the acts of the Enrolment, taken in Judaea by
command of Augustus, were kept in the public archives of Rome.

The holy Doctor adduces a second argument, which he founds upon the Gospel
of St Luke, and he reasons thus: we know from the sacred Scriptures that it
must have been in the fast of the seventh month that the Priest Zachary had
the vision in the Temple; after which Elizabeth, his wife, conceived St John
the Baptist: hence it follows that the Blessed Virgin Mary having, as the
Evangelist St Luke relates, received the Angel Gabriel's visit, and
conceived the Saviour of the world in the sixth month of Elizabeth's
pregnancy, that is to say, in March, the Birth of Jesus must have taken
place in the month of December.


CHRISTMAS and EPIPHANY

But it was not till the fourth century that the Churches of the East began
to keep the Feast of our Saviour's Birth in the month of December. Up to
that period they had kept it at one time on the sixth of January, thus
uniting it, under the generic term of Epiphany, with the Manifestation of
our Saviour made to the Magi, and in them to the Gentiles; at another time,
as St Clement of Alexandria tells us, they kept it on the 25th of the month
Pachon (May 15) , or on the 25th of the month Pharmuth (April 20). St John
Chrysostom, in the Homily we have just cited, which he gave in 386, tells us
that the Roman custom of celebrating the Birth of our Saviour on December 25
had then only been observed ten years in the Church of Antioch. It is
probable that this change had been introduced in obedience to the wishes of
the Apostolic See, wishes which received additional weight by the edict of
the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, which appeared towards the close of
the fourth century, and decreed that the Nativity and Epiphany of our Lord
should be made two distinct Festivals.

The only Church that has maintained the custom of celebrating the two
mysteries on January 6 is that of Armenia; owing, no doubt, to the
circuмstance of that country not being under the authority of the Emperors;
as also because it was withdrawn at an early period from the influence of
Rome by schism and heresy.


AN INFANT-GOD and a VIRGIN-MOTHER

But what is the characteristic of Christmas in the Latin Liturgy? It is
twofold: it is joy, which the whole Church feels at the coming of the Divine
Word in the Flesh; and it is admiration of that glorious Virgin, who was
made the Mother of God. There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in the
Liturgy of this glad Season, which does not imply these two grand Mysteries:
an Infant-God, and a Virgin-Mother.  The Liturgy never loses sight of the
Divine Babe and his incomparable Mother, and never tires in their praises,
during the whole period from the Nativity to the day when Mary comes to the
Temple to present her Jesus.

The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary in
their Offices of this Season: but they have a special veneration for the
twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their Liturgy,
are called the Dodecameron. During this time they observe no days of
Abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect
for the great Mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that
the Courts of Law should be closed, until after January 6.

>From this outline of the history of the holy season, we can understand what
is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which
we call Christmas, and which has ever been a season most dear to the
Christian world.