Advent and Christmas

Celebrating the Birth of Christ

The principle celebration of the Birth of Christ in the Western part of the Church was on 25 December; in the Eastern part of the Church, however, the principal celebration was on 6 January, the feast of the Epiphany.  The Western Church basically involved Western Europe and the Eastern Church involved Eastern Europe and what we today would call the Middle East.  Each part of the Church celebrated both feasts but did not give them the same emphasis.  So, we celebrate the Epiphany on the second Sunday after Christmas but it does not loom large in our awareness.

In the West, the celebration of Christmas concentrated on the central figures involved in Jesus’ birth: Mary, Joseph, the angels and the shepherds as these are mentioned particularly in St Luke’s Gospel, as well as the three wise men mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel.  We can find a lot of artwork in the first millennium depicting the birth of Jesus but the crib as such only came into being later.

It was the initiative of St Francis of Assisi which gave us the Christmas crib we have become used to.  He liked the idea of having a picturesque and concrete image of the birth of Jesus as an effective way of bringing home to people the reality of Jesus’ birth in our flesh.  And the idea took on and became widely popular.

As a result of this, we began to get new figures coming into the crib: the cows, the sheep and the donkey began to appear at the birth of Jesus in many traditional cribs.  These have become part of our overall celebration of Christmas and they do have their part to play in telling us just who Jesus is and what his birth means for us. 

In the week following Christmas Day we have other feasts which in one way or another are associated with it.  On 26 December, we have St Stephen, the first martyr who gave his life for the Lord Jesus, on 27 December we have St John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple because of his closeness to Jesus and then on 28 December we have the Holy Innocents who were killed by Herod’s soldiers in their search to find and kill the child Jesus.  On the Sunday following, we have the feast of the Holy Family which spreads our attention to Mary and Joseph in particular and then on 1 January we have the feast of Mary, the mother of God.  Then comes Epiphany on the second Sunday after Christmas.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 13 December 2024