The New Math of Christmas

Do people who sing the Twelve Days of Christmas carol notice there aren’t twelve days of Christmas most years? And what happened with the Forty Days of Christmas?

Twelve days of Christmas? According to the new Catholic Church calendar in effect in most places since 1969, this year there are thirteen. Forty days in the Christmas season? This year there are only fifteen.

Changes to the traditional liturgical calendar have affected some notions about the Christmas season that are deeply ingrained in our culture. I’m writing about these changes not much to criticize them as to point them out.

Epiphany Date Change

Epiphany was traditionally celebrated on January 6 as a holy day of obligation. Over time, the number of holy days of obligation increased to twenty-eight. (A holy day of obligation is a day on which Catholics are obliged to go to Mass and abstain from unnecessary work, as we are required to do on Sundays.)

Bishops of many countries obtained permission from the Holy See to either remove the obligation to attend Mass on certain feasts or transfer the feasts to a nearby Sunday. Epiphany is one of several holy days that have been transferred in most countries to a nearby Sunday. Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and some dioceses in Germany continue to observe Epiphany on January 6, where it is still a holy day of obligation.

In all other countries, Epiphany is celebrated on the closest Sunday to January 6 that occurs between January 2 and 8th, and therefore Epiphany is never celebrated on January 6 in those countries unless January 6 falls on a Sunday.

The Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church determined since 1969 that "Christmas Time runs from First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the Nativity of the Lord up to and including the Sunday after Epiphany or after January 6.”

All this taken together means there are no longer Twelve Days of Christmas during most years in the vast majority of Catholic Churches that follow the “new” (1969) calendar.

For comparison sake, take a look at Table 1, which shows the twelve days of Christmas as they are observed in the traditional liturgical calendar for this year. The 1960 liturgical calendar is followed where what Pope Benedict XVI called the Extraordinary Form is celebrated. According to the 1960 calendar, the count starts on December 25, the feast of the Nativity of the Lord (In Nativitate Domini), and ends on the 12th day, January 5, the day before the feast of the Epiphany (In Epiphania Domini) on January 6.

The evening of Christmas Day is the First Night of Christmas, and January 5 is the Twelfth Night.

By another reckoning, which I came across only once in my research, December 26th is considered the First Day of Christmas. That would make January 6th the Twelfth Day.

When to Celebrate Epiphany?

The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei confirmed that it is legitimate to continue to celebrate the Mass and Divine Office of the feast on the days prescribed in the 1960 Calendar, but there is no obligation for the faithful to attend Mass on those days. At churches, chapels, and oratories where the traditional calendar is observed, January 6 is still celebrated as the Feast of the Epiphany. Most tradition-minded Catholics choose to attend Mass on Epiphany even though there is no obligation.

Christmas Ends in Thirteen Days in 2023/2024 (in the New Calendar)

In the liturgical year 2024, which started on Christmas Day 2023, there are thirteen days of Christmas, since Epiphany Sunday is January 7.

Looks like we need to add to the classic song. On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, thirteen . . .

Thirteen what? I can’t imagine. Googling, I found one wag suggested this as what happens on the thirteenth day: “On the thirteenth day of Christmas my true love was investigated for his many flagrant violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.”

Forty Days Count Down

And what happened to the forty days of the Christmas season? In case you don’t remember or never heard this before, the Christmas season used to be celebrated for a total of forty days ever since the early centuries of the Church–until 1969. Liturgical scholar Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote a century earlier, in 1868, “We apply the name of Christmas to the 40 days which begin with the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2.

February 2 is also called Candlemas. In the revised 1969 calendar, February 2 is observed as the Presentation of the Lord. See ”February 2: A Feast of Manifestation, Purification, and Candles” for more information about all the layers of meaning that are part of this important feast.

Table 3 shows the Forty Days of Christmas in the traditional liturgical calendar. The days of the week on which the dates fall change every year, but the number of days does not change.

The Baptism of Our Lord used to be observed as part of the feast of Epiphany, until 1955, when Pope Pius XII instituted it as a separate feast. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops rules that the end of the Christmas season is the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, which falls either on the first Sunday after January 6, or on the following Monday. Pope Paul VI set the date for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord to be the first Sunday after January 6 or, “if in a particular country the Epiphany is celebrated on 7 or 8 January, on the following Monday.”

If you go to Mass at a Catholic Church that follows the new calendar, the total number of days of the Christmas season varies, and the number is always going to be much shorter than forty days.

This change meant that according to the new calendar, the Christmas season for 2015/2016 ended on January 10, seventeen days after Christmas instead of forty. And every year, this calculation must be made anew.

During the liturgical year 2023/2024, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord falls on the Monday after Epiphany, January 8. As shown in Table 4, the 2023/2024 Christmas season according to the new calendar is only fifteen days long.

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This little exploration of the changes to the dates when we celebrate Christmas is intended to give you a glimpse of the big picture. Sometimes you just have to wonder, what was so broken that it needed to be fixed so badly?

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This article was originally posted at Dappled Things Deep Down Things blog, and it has been extensively revised and updated.

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