When Does Christmas End?

Leaving aside pop movies and songs that play on the theme “It’s Christmas every day” (or, more provincially, “It’s Christmas every day in Alaska“), we liturgists know that (A) Christmas is a liturgical season, not just one day, (B) this season does in fact come to an end, and (C) the last Sunday of the Christmas season is the feast of The Baptism of the Lord.

This is not speculation on my part.

It’s explained in the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar (GNLYC, no. 33-38). The inclusion of Baptism of the Lord in the Christmas season also is noted in the Lectionary for Mass Introduction (LMI, 95). It’s stated directly in the Ordo. It appears on the USCCB website.

So why, pray tell, does the heading for this feast in the US Lectionary for Mass, second typical edition, subtitle The Baptism of the Lord as the “(First Sunday in Ordinary Time)”?

There it is, in boldface type — at least in my lectionary. Then, however, after the readings for the feast, the rubrics go on to state (correctly) that “The readings for the Sundays in Ordinary Time begin on the Sunday following the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.” [emphasis added] Hmmm.

I wouldn’t mention it, except for the fact that this heading has sown and continues to sow confusion. I experienced it very recently. At the place where I go to church — and the people there are very smart indeed and well-educated — the presider confidently announced on the Baptism of the Lord that we are now in the season of Ordinary Time!

I talked with him afterwards, seeking his source, thinking “Who knows? Maybe somebody changed it and I missed the memo.” The liturgy director chimed in at once, saying “Oh yes, it’s Ordinary Time!” The priest wasn’t so sure, but he took the word of his liturgy person.

And, of course when we looked it up… there it was, in black and white (and red) before our eyes — in the Lectionary.

OK, editorial mistakes happen. But someone who put the US Lectionary together obviously thought it was not a mistake, because it comes up again at the start of Ordinary Time. Here it is: “First Sunday in Ordinary Time [A][B][C]” in headline type, followed by these words (smaller) in red: “The First Sunday in Ordinary Time is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.”

As far as I know, there is no move out there to correct what seems to me to be obviously a mistake. Or is there? Perhaps someone knows of a correction that has been sent out, which I missed (and my church missed as well). If so, I would be glad to know about it.

In popular piety, especially among Italians, but also in some other groups I am told, the Christmas crib is left up until the Feast of the Presentation. So, visually at least, there has been a little reminder of Christmas around until a couple of days ago.

My view is: Let’s not rush the season of Ordinary Time. We need as much Christmas as we can get.

Even if it’s not every day.

Rita Ferrone

Rita Ferrone is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker on issues of liturgy and church renewal in the Roman Catholic tradition. She is currently a contributing writer and columnist for Commonweal magazine and an independent scholar. The author of several books about liturgy, she is most widely known for her commentary on Sacrosanctum Concilium (Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Paulist Press). Her most recent book, Pastoral Guide to Pope Francis's Desiderio Desideravi, was published by Liturgical Press.

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Comments

20 responses to “When Does Christmas End?”

  1. Karl Liam Saur

    Precision has not been the strong suit of the USCCB staff in liturgical calendar matters.

    While we’re on the subject, I am sure there are people who wonder what the First Sunday in Ordinary Time is, and reverse-engineer such a thing out of the Baptism of The Lord. It’s probably too much to have to go through the intended logic of the taxonomy – we have weeks of ordinally counted time (so, substantively, we’re talking about the Sunday of the N week of ordinally counted time), three of which are incomplete and another that might be omitted entirely. The first week is incomplete – the Sunday is Christmastide through vespers. This same thing happens at Pentecost. The week in which Ash Wednesday falls is another incomplete week. And, in many years, an entire week of ordinally counted time is also omitted.

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  2. Christopher Alt

    So the USCCB website is also in disagreement with itself: the Sunday following Baptism of the Lord, January 17, is titled “Second Sunday of Ordinary Time,” which conflicts with its liturgical notes for Christmas.

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  3. Fr. Shawn P. Tunink

    I’m in the library right now so I grabbed the Latin typical edition of the “Ordo Lectionum Missae.” The readings for the Baptism of the Lord are clearly indicated in the section “Tempus Nativitatis” and are listed under the heading “Dominica post diem 6 ianuarii occurrente in Baptismate Domini.” When you move forward to the “Tempus ‘Per Anum'” section, the first readings listed are under the heading “Dominica Secunda.” However, there is a note above it that says, “Dominica prima fit festum baptismatis domini (cf. supra, n. 21).” The number 21 refers back the readings for the Baptism.

    I would therefore conclude that the English lectionary is not wrong in that it accurately translates what is in the typical edition. However, what seems clear from the typical edition (maybe not as clear in the English printings) is that the reference to the Baptism of the Lord in the Ordinary Time section is merely a sort of placeholder instruction for people who might wonder why there is no “Dominica Prima” listed for Ordinary Time. The Baptism of the Lord is clearly NOT part of Ordinary Time (even if it is now possible to celebrate it on a Monday).

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  4. Phyllis Zagano

    Oh, come on, every day is Christmas!

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  5. Fr. Shawn P. Tunink

    Upon further inspection, I see what Rita is referring to now. The heading “First Sunday in Ordinary Time” is found under the heading “Baptism of the Lord” listed in the printed Lectionary in the U.S. This heading is not found in the Latin typical edition (the “Ordo Lectionum Missae” of 1981). Of further interest, this heading was not in the previous English edition Lectionary (1970). It appears to have been added only in the 1998 update. Confusing indeed.

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  6. Philip Spaeth

    I agree that Baptism of the Lord is clearly on the Christmas side of the liturgical year’s demarcation line. However, it also seems to me that this feast is something of a pivot point which helps us to transition from Christmastide to Ordinary Time. I often find that, through this Feast, we are gently guided from reveling in the mystery of the Incarnation to being recommissioned as Baptized Christians who are meant to be the hands and feet of Christ in our world. Our liturgical seasons need not always begin or end abruptly!

    I do think that the confusion comes from much of what was mentioned in other posts. “First Sunday in Ordinary Time” can be shorthand for “The Sunday that happens to fall at the beginning of the first week in Ordinary Time.” That Sunday, however, is clearly not IN Ordinary Time. One could say correctly this year that Pentecost is “The Sunday that happens to fall at the beginning of the seventh week in Ordinary Time,” but it still remains Pentecost, and therefore is still part of Eastertide. However, that celebration, too, can serve as something of a pivot that sends us forth into Ordinary Time, recommissioned to do God’s work after fifty days reveling in His Resurrection. The source of confusion seems to be the mere fact that we are CONCLUDING a season on the FIRST DAY of the week. This also makes a good case that these days should be a transitional time for us, and that we should perhaps not draw our liturgical borders too darkly.

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  7. JT Hadley

    Of course, this is the Roman perspective on the question. For many traditions the season of Epiphany remains and the celebration of the Incarnation ends 40 days after, on the feast of Hypapante…

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  8. Todd Orbitz

    I never knew any different. We took our tree and creche down two days ago…. and we are Irish and French background — not Italian.

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  9. Fr. Shawn P. Tunink

    After poking around to see if I could find anything else on this, the conclusion seems to be that adding the title “First Sunday in Ordinary Time” (in parenthesis at least) to the feast of the Baptism of the Lord was an innovation by ICEL to the 1998 update of the Lectionary in the days before Liturgiam Authenticam required adherence to the typical edition. It’s not in the typical edition, or the previous 1970 version, nor is it in the Canadian version.

    I’m wondering if the line in the Ordo Lectionum Missae ““Dominica prima fit festum baptismatis domini” throws things off when this is translated “The first Sunday of Ordinary time IS the Baptism of the Lord.” The verb used here is “fit” not “est.” It seems a better translation would be something more like “The first Sunday of Ordinary time BECOMES the Baptism of the Lord.” At any rate, the 3rd edition of the Missal removes any ambiguity: “Dominica in qua fit festum Baptismatis Domini LOCUM TENET primae dominicae ‘per anum.'”

    This whole thing made me realize how infrequently I actually look at a physical Lectionary these days. I normally always get the readings from some place else and I only end up seeing the Book of the Gospels at Mass. The Missal doesn’t have this error, so I’ve never actually noticed. Good catch by Rita. This wouldn’t survive a post Liturgiam Authenticam revision.

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  10. Jan Larson

    The 1998 missal, rejected by the Vatican but preferred by God, says “Ordinary Time begins on the Monday after the Sunday following 6 January…”

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  11. Christian McConnell

    Despite what the books may or may not say, I’d suggest that any precision about the end of the Christmas season is unsupportable. If the books seem a little ambiguous and slippery, it’s because the *reality* of it is such. The “tria miracula” of Epiphany get spread out in our calendar, beyond January 6 (and now Epiphany isn’t always celebrated then!). so that we seem to ease gently and gradually through the full mystery of Epiphany, right into the beginning of ordinary time. Precision just isn’t a reasonable expectation.

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  12. Jim McKay

    I’ve long been intrigued by this wonderfully screwy mathematics. The first Sunday in Ordinary Time is named the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time! A few times candidates in the Rcia asked about the oddity, since our books were lectionaries based. (We go where next? Where is the 1st Sunday?)

    I thought it was a translation problem, the Latin meaning “Sunday of the first week in ordinary time” which is not the same as first Sunday in ordinary time. It is also more of a mouthful. Besides, doesn’t the calendar count back from Christ the King? That’s how we lose a couple of weeks during Lent/Easter some years. Counting backwards ordinally doesn’t have to reach 1.

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    1. Karl Liam Saur

      @Jim McKay:
      The ordinal weeks in Ordinary Time are counted forward from the Baptism of the Lord until Lent, and backward from the First Sunday of Advent to Pentecost.

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  13. Paul Inwood

    Fr Shawn Tunink is only partially correct. This discrepancy was noticed in the original 1969 Ordo Lectionum Missae. At the time, the general consensus was that the 1st Sunday of Ordinary Time was indeed the Baptism of the Lord (a brand new feast back then), and did not form the conclusion to Christmastide.

    The confusion arose because of the way the new calendar and lectionary were devised (they were worked on by different Consilium groups) and the necessity to incorporate the account of the baptism of the Lord (and the marriage feast at Cana, come to that) in the time adjacent to Epiphany, since both of these were themselves forms of epiphany and because of the positioning of these pericopes in the preconciliar lectionary.

    Certainly USCCB is not to blame, and neither is ICEL. The heading “1st Sunday in Ordinary Time” under the heading “Baptism of the Lord” (cf. Fr Shawn at #5 above) is found in national lectionaries of other countries from 1970 onward that did not make use of the ICEL text, and indeed is found in at least one edition of the 1981 Lectionarium (there were two editions in the same year), so it is not correct to attribute its addition to the 1998 update of the US Lectionary.

    Concerning Fr Shawn’s #9, other national lectionaries also translate the rubric as “The First Sunday of Ordinary Time is the feast of the Baptism of the Lord”. The Latin fit would best be translated as “should be”, so “is” is a ‘dynamic equivalent’ version!

    Of course, if the revisers had decided that Christmastide actually ended on February 2, the “Feast of Lights”, that would have made things so much clearer….

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    1. Fr. Shawn P. Tunink

      @Paul Inwood:
      I don’t mean to present any major disagreements with Paul or to belabor this bit of minutiae too far. The feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a sort of transitional day no latter how one precisely places it in the missal. I was more interested in the evolution of this in the liturgical books. I have not been able to find a copy of the 1969 Ordo, but it seems that Paul is saying that the Baptism was assigned to Ordinary Time at that point. It would be interesting to see the discussion that led to the change in 1981.

      As to the other lectionaries I looked at number of different English ones. What I found most interesting was that more than one, the Australian for instance, put the Baptism both at the end of Christmas and also repeated at the beginning of Ordinary time. Since the Baptism has multiple options for years A, B, and C, they apparently felt it was more convenient to place the day with its proper text at the beginning of Ordinary Time for the respective year. It’s not clear that they actually considered it a part of Ordinary Time, but it certainly made it look that way.

      As for the 1998 update for the U.S., I was only referring to the fact that the added title “1st Sunday of Ordinary Time” was not there in previous U.S. lectionaries and it was added in the 1998 version. Other English lectionaries also included it. My point was that it is not in the typical edition Ordo. If you just translate what’s there, you don’t add this title which, as was the point of Rita’s article, is not correct.

      I’m still trying to understand the traditional calendar more, but it seems that even in the Extraordinary Form, the Baptism is still the last day of Christmastide, even though it is fixed on January 13th. That seems to be the case at least in the 1962 Missale. There is of course the older tradition of Christmastide lasting until Feb. 2nd. I’m not clear on this history, but I agree with Paul that this would be ideal and fits Rita’s desire that we shouldn’t…

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    2. Fr. Shawn P. Tunink

      @Paul Inwood:
      My Latin is still in the “becoming” phase, but for those who need help getting to sleep, here is a question about “fit.” I’m not sure about Paul’s translation of “fit” as “should be.” “Fit” is the 3rd person singular present indicative of fio, a semi-deponent verb which forms the passive system of facere. It’s not subjunctive, so I don’t see how it could be translated in the optative sense of “should be.” The basic meaning of the verb is “to become.” In the passive sense, this means the subject receives the action and thus “becomes.” But when something “becomes” something it normally implies that it has become something else, something other than what it was. So, in using “fit” to say that the subject, in this case “Dominica Prima” or “The First Sunday in Ordinary Time,” becomes the Baptism of the Lord, this seems to say that what was or would have been the 1st Sunday in Ordinary Time has instead become something else, namely, the fest of the Baptism of the Lord.

      If you translate “fit” simply as “is,” as though the verb were “est,” then you seem to have two things existing equally at the same time, namely 1OT and the Baptism, as two celebrations on the same day. At any rate, that discussion is just for fun. As I said above, the Missal gets it much better with “locum tenet.” Now it’s time to get ready for Lent. Happy Quinquagesima.

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  14. Norman Borelli

    “The words ‘Ordinary Time’ in our prayer books put me in a state of confusion and irritation. To me, no time is ordinary.” — Dorothy Day, Servant of God

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  15. John Kohanski

    Leaving the numbering of Sundays as “The __ Sunday after Epiphany” and “The __ Sunday after Pentecost” made much more sense and gives an added dimension that it’s still a “season.”

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    1. Thomas Strickland

      John Kohanski :

      As Episcopalians and some other Protestants do. We use a slightly different nomenclature in Lectionaries, giving “proper” numbers, since the Sunday between September 25 and October 1 (26th Sunday in Ordinary Time in the Roman Lectionary) will be the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost this year, but it was the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost in 2010. Confusing? Slightly, but no more so than beginning one’s counting at 2, and then leaving it for a couple of months to resume at other than where one left off!

      Also, we have a proper for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, being the accounts of the Transfiguration, a fitting conclusion for a season of “showing.”

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  16. Erin Herman

    Kenny Rogers, nice singer with great voice and amazing lyrics http://lyricsmusic.name/kenny-rogers-lyrics/ , ‘Christmas Everyday’ still the best song.

    Reply

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