By Greg Chandler
Zeeland Record
So, have you already started removing your Christmas decorations, taken down the tree, packed the nativity scene away for another year?
May I suggest that you’re jumping the gun a little early?
I think we have a tendency in our pursuit of “the next thing” that we rush past the Christmas season, that once the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 25 and we move to Dec. 26, we think “ok, that’s it, Christmas is done for another year.”
I mean, the radio stations that had been playing Christmas music since the day after Halloween all of a sudden go back to their regular formats on Dec. 26.
I believe I have 1,500 years of church history on my side on this one.
In the Western church liturgical calendar, Dec. 25 is just the beginning, not the end of the Christmas season. There’s a 12-day period between Dec. 25 and Jan. 5, the day before Epiphany, called Christmastide. There’s even a little ditty you may have heard of
called “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” where the first day of Christmas is Dec. 25.
For those from the Orthodox faith tradition, largely in places like Russia, Ukraine and Ethiopia, Christmas Day is observed Jan. 7. The Pew Research Center estimates that 12 percent of all Christians – 260 million people worldwide – worship in the Orthodox tradition.
My friend Andrea is of the Orthodox tradition. She says most Orthodox Christians in the U.S. do celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 and then go on to celebrate for the next 12 days leading up to Theophany (also known as Epiphany or Three Kings Day) on Jan. 6.
Why the difference in the dates on which Christmas is observed? It’s literally a case of two different calendars.
The calendar you and I follow every year is called the Gregorian calendar. But that’s not the calendar that was in place for literally more than a thousand years.
In 325 A.D., a group of Christian bishops known as the First Council of Nicaea met to determine a standard date – not for celebrating Christmas, but for celebrating Easter. The bishops based their dates on the Julian calendar, which was adopted by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. A year in that calendar was based on how long it took the sun to go around the earth, estimated at 365.25 days.
The only problem was that the calculations used to determine a solar year were off target – by about 11 minutes. So, what ended up happening was that the calendar and solar year became more and more out of sync.
Enter Pope Gregory XIII. In 1582, Pope Greg said “let’s fix this discrepancy,” based on the more accurate astronomical calculations of the solar year.
While many Protestants initially objected to the new calendar, believing it was a plot to force them back into Catholicism (remember, the Reformation was still fairly young), by the mid-18th century the majority of the Christian world, including the U.S. colonies that were under British rule, had adopted the Gregorian calendar.
However, the Orthodox tradition continued to follow the Julian calendar. By 1923, the gap between the two calendars had reached 13 days, so that Christmas in that tradition is now observed on Jan. 7, not Dec. 25.
Meanwhile, the Western Christian tradition of Christmastide dates back to 567 A.D., where the Council of Tours determined that a period between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6 should be set aside for celebration.
The Catholic Church, as well as several mainline Protestant denominations, observe Christmastide. There are several major feast days within that 12-day period. They include St. Stephen’s Day (remembering the first Christian martyr) on Dec. 26, Childermas (remembering the massacre of the boys two years of age and under that was ordered by King Herod in hopes of eliminating the infant Jesus) on Dec. 28, and the Feast of Circumcision (remembering when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the Temple to be named) on Jan. 1.
The Calvinist/Reformed tradition generally took a dim view of the feast days after Christmas. Bruce Gordon, a Yale University professor considered to be the nation’s preeminent scholar on John Calvin, wrote in an essay that Reformed Protestants in the 16th century continued to celebrate Christmas, while at the same time sought to remove feast days from observance.
“For the sixteenth-century Reformers, it was one thing to remove the superstitious veneration of saints but entirely another to follow through the year the life of Christ as told in the gospels,” Gordon writes. “Calvin sought to reclaim Christmas as a celebration of Christ’s Nativity, a defining moment for Christians, without making the festival binding on the faithful. At the same time, his intention was to purge the holiday of the excesses of public exuberance traditionally associated with both the feast and what he viewed as the ‘abomination’ of the Mass.”
In more recent years, Calvinist denominations began to reclaim some of the traditions associated with Christmas. A friend of mine who is a Calvin scholar and former Christian Reformed Church pastor says in 1968, the CRC made a conscious decision to recognize the liturgical year that begins with the start of Advent.
So, what does this all mean for us?
I think for me, it reminds us to continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and remember what he came for – to reconcile us to God through the shedding of His blood on the cross.
And go right ahead and keep that tree up for another five days, and crank up those Christmas songs!
Zeeland Record
So, have you already started removing your Christmas decorations, taken down the tree, packed the nativity scene away for another year?
May I suggest that you’re jumping the gun a little early?
I think we have a tendency in our pursuit of “the next thing” that we rush past the Christmas season, that once the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 25 and we move to Dec. 26, we think “ok, that’s it, Christmas is done for another year.”
I mean, the radio stations that had been playing Christmas music since the day after Halloween all of a sudden go back to their regular formats on Dec. 26.
I believe I have 1,500 years of church history on my side on this one.
In the Western church liturgical calendar, Dec. 25 is just the beginning, not the end of the Christmas season. There’s a 12-day period between Dec. 25 and Jan. 5, the day before Epiphany, called Christmastide. There’s even a little ditty you may have heard of
called “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” where the first day of Christmas is Dec. 25.
For those from the Orthodox faith tradition, largely in places like Russia, Ukraine and Ethiopia, Christmas Day is observed Jan. 7. The Pew Research Center estimates that 12 percent of all Christians – 260 million people worldwide – worship in the Orthodox tradition.
My friend Andrea is of the Orthodox tradition. She says most Orthodox Christians in the U.S. do celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 and then go on to celebrate for the next 12 days leading up to Theophany (also known as Epiphany or Three Kings Day) on Jan. 6.
Why the difference in the dates on which Christmas is observed? It’s literally a case of two different calendars.
The calendar you and I follow every year is called the Gregorian calendar. But that’s not the calendar that was in place for literally more than a thousand years.
In 325 A.D., a group of Christian bishops known as the First Council of Nicaea met to determine a standard date – not for celebrating Christmas, but for celebrating Easter. The bishops based their dates on the Julian calendar, which was adopted by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. A year in that calendar was based on how long it took the sun to go around the earth, estimated at 365.25 days.
The only problem was that the calculations used to determine a solar year were off target – by about 11 minutes. So, what ended up happening was that the calendar and solar year became more and more out of sync.
Enter Pope Gregory XIII. In 1582, Pope Greg said “let’s fix this discrepancy,” based on the more accurate astronomical calculations of the solar year.
While many Protestants initially objected to the new calendar, believing it was a plot to force them back into Catholicism (remember, the Reformation was still fairly young), by the mid-18th century the majority of the Christian world, including the U.S. colonies that were under British rule, had adopted the Gregorian calendar.
However, the Orthodox tradition continued to follow the Julian calendar. By 1923, the gap between the two calendars had reached 13 days, so that Christmas in that tradition is now observed on Jan. 7, not Dec. 25.
Meanwhile, the Western Christian tradition of Christmastide dates back to 567 A.D., where the Council of Tours determined that a period between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6 should be set aside for celebration.
The Catholic Church, as well as several mainline Protestant denominations, observe Christmastide. There are several major feast days within that 12-day period. They include St. Stephen’s Day (remembering the first Christian martyr) on Dec. 26, Childermas (remembering the massacre of the boys two years of age and under that was ordered by King Herod in hopes of eliminating the infant Jesus) on Dec. 28, and the Feast of Circumcision (remembering when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the Temple to be named) on Jan. 1.
The Calvinist/Reformed tradition generally took a dim view of the feast days after Christmas. Bruce Gordon, a Yale University professor considered to be the nation’s preeminent scholar on John Calvin, wrote in an essay that Reformed Protestants in the 16th century continued to celebrate Christmas, while at the same time sought to remove feast days from observance.
“For the sixteenth-century Reformers, it was one thing to remove the superstitious veneration of saints but entirely another to follow through the year the life of Christ as told in the gospels,” Gordon writes. “Calvin sought to reclaim Christmas as a celebration of Christ’s Nativity, a defining moment for Christians, without making the festival binding on the faithful. At the same time, his intention was to purge the holiday of the excesses of public exuberance traditionally associated with both the feast and what he viewed as the ‘abomination’ of the Mass.”
In more recent years, Calvinist denominations began to reclaim some of the traditions associated with Christmas. A friend of mine who is a Calvin scholar and former Christian Reformed Church pastor says in 1968, the CRC made a conscious decision to recognize the liturgical year that begins with the start of Advent.
So, what does this all mean for us?
I think for me, it reminds us to continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and remember what he came for – to reconcile us to God through the shedding of His blood on the cross.
And go right ahead and keep that tree up for another five days, and crank up those Christmas songs!
