The Second Day of Christmas: the Holy Family

The rest of the world thinks Christmas is over, with the possible exception of those who celebrate Boxing Day today or those fond of partridges in pear trees. Oh, how wrong they are!

For like Easter, Christmas isn’t just one day, but a whole season! The Twelve Days of Christmas continue right up through the Epiphany (January 6). In some places, this season is called Christmastide or Yuletide.

But of course, it’s more complicated than that! You can’t have 2,000 years of people mucking around with the calendar and expect to have everything so nice and neat.

In addition to being a day and a season, Christmas also has an Octave. This is the ancient tradition of the Church to add an entire week to the day that is Christmas, making it actually eight days long.

So “Christmas” is a day, an Octave and a Season, making it one, eight, or twelve days long depending on which one you are talking about. Got that?

But wait! There’s more!

The Christmas Season is chock-full of other holy days, so you’re always celebrating something in addition to Christ’s birth. In a way, these holy days provide you a pretty good snapshot of the Church’s history.

Today is the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In the Holy Family, God gives us a living icon of family life: child, mother, father.

And more than that, this being an icon and not just a pattern or ideal, we are given an icon of a holy family life, centered on God. This family was beset by the problems of the world – from being refugees in Egypt from the wrath of Herod right up until the moment Mary’s heart broke at the sight of her son’s brutal torture and execution.

And yet, they made for themselves a home, wherever they were. A home of love and domestic joy.

Of course, today’s psalm reminds us that even in the midst of the family home, we are only pilgrims upon this earth, journeying towards our heavenly home.

Happy they who dwell in your house!
Continually they praise you.
Happy the men whose strength you are!
Their hearts are set upon the pilgrimage.

– from Psalm 84, Responsorial Psalm for today’s Feast
(second option)

Through all their joys and travails, the Holy Family discerned and followed the will of God, and they turned to each other. They become not just the model, but the very definition of a holy family.

The Sunday feast trumps the feast ordinarily celebrated on December 26, the Feast of Stephen. You can read about him on last year’s post.