Introduction to Christmas, Year A

 

Christmas (often referred to as Christmastide to distinguish it from Christmas Day) is the second season of the annual Christian Calendar. It is a short (twelve day) season that follows Advent and ends on the Epiphany of the Lord. The famous “twelve days of Christmas” song refers to this season of Christmas that follows Christmas Day. The liturgical colours for the season of Christmas are gold or white.

In the secular world, the Christmas/Holiday season is usually celebrated in the weeks leading up to Christmas Day, but in the Christian Calendar, the Christmas season begins on Christmas Day and extends into the first or second week of January, depending on what day of the week Christmas Day falls on. There are usually two additional Sundays in the season of Christmas. However, because Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, there is only one more Sunday in this Christmas season which also happens to fall on New Years Day.

The Revised Common Lectionary provides several other readings for Christmastide. There are three sets of readings for Christmas Day - Proper A, B and C. In some churches, Proper A is used at a Christmas Eve service, Proper B at Dawn on Christmas Day and Proper C at the traditional Christmas Day service. New Years Day also falls within Christmastide and the RCL provides readings for this day as well as Holy Name of Jesus Sunday which is sometimes celebrated on New Years Day.

Popular ways of celebrating this season include gift-giving, singing carols, decorating trees and houses, and viewing nativity plays. Churches and Christians often use this season as an opportunity to give gifts to the poor, usually children.

The Christmas Season has been criticised by many for becoming overly commercialised which many have argued has drawn attention away from “the real meaning of Christmas.” This has led to some Christians calling people to “keep the Christ in Christmas,” referring to the way that some people refer to Christmas as X-mas. Funnily enough, Xmas is an abbreviation of Christmas based on the initial letter chi (Χ) in the Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός) ("Christ"). Perhaps, as Steve Maraboli said so beautifully, rather than arguing over the correct use of a word, we can keep the Christ in Christmas by using this Christmas season to do the things Christ did - “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love our enemies, and do unto others as we would want them to do to us.”