Entry #2 of my video series on the basics of the Church Calendar has been on YouTube for a week or two now, and it’s time to share it here.  Yes, most of you who read this already know that Christmas doesn’t start until Christmas Day (or Eve, technically), but I’m putting this out there now in preparation – I know a lot of people tend to get quite busy during the week in which Christmas lands.

Christmas is best known as the celebration of the birth of Jesus, but theologically (as the Collects and Lessons elucidate) the application of the Christmas celebration is far more theologically rich: we celebrate God the Son taking on human nature and thereby sharing his divinity with us!  Thus we celebrate the beginning of our redemption, our salvation, without even having to bring the Cross into the picture.

A resource that may be useful is last year’s write-up observing the differences between Christmas Day and Christmas Sunday: https://saint-aelfric-customary.org/2018/12/29/christmas-day-versus-sunday/  Apart from that, here’s the video: