Christmas Eve
Almighty God, you make us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of your Son Jesus Christ: grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our judge; who’s alive and reigns. . . Common Worship.
Christmas Night
Eternal God, who made this most holy night to shine with the brightness of your one true light: bring us, who’ve known the revelation of that light on earth, to see the radiance of your heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ. . . Common Worship
Christmas Day
Almighty God, you might have given us your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him and as presently to be born of a pure virgin: grant that we, who’ve been born again and made your kids by adoption and style, may each day be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through Jesus Christ. . . Common Worship
FOR those of us who’re “cradle Christians”, the story of Christmas was our earliest introduction to the Lord Jesus. As very young children, we perhaps heard the story of Bethlehem at our mother’s knee. Then, at infant school, we delighted to make use of crayons to depict the Holy Family within the stable, with attendant angels and shepherds. Best of all were those richly apparelled and gloriously crowned kings from the East.
It got here as a surprise, subsequently, later to learn that, for the primary generation of converts to Christ, the story of Bethlehem was unknown. Neither St Paul, whose letters make up many of the New Testament, nor the authors of the Gospels of Mark and John referred to what the Church later got here to treat as the elemental icon of the incarnation: Christ’s birth at Bethlehem.
In the Early Church, the festival of Christ’s nativity was secondary in historical terms to Easter. It was not until the fourth century that 25 December received general recognition because the date on which to rejoice Christ’s birth. By then, the Western Church, which looked to Rome, and the Eastern Church, which looked to Constantinople, had borrowed from one another’s traditions, creating — within the West, at the very least — a continuous narrative from Christmas to Epiphany. Our calendar then acquired its familiar markers: 25 December (Christmas), 6 January (Epiphany), and a couple of February (The Presentation of our Lord within the Temple).
THE collects provided for Christmas in Common Worship are drawn ultimately from Latin sacramentaries, dating from the fourth to the eighth centuries. The one for Christmas Eve (see above) strikes a completely satisfied note with its references to our joy and gladness. It first appeared within the Gelasian Sacramentary to be used in Advent, which explains the allusion to the Second Coming. The language lifts our minds from the scene at Bethlehem to thoughts of redemption and judgement. Cranmer used it as one in all the Christmas collects in his 1549 Book of Common Prayer, but later omitted it. The Alternative Service Book (1980) restored it, as did Common Worship (2000).
In recognition of the growing popularity of the Christmas midnight eucharist, the Liturgical Commission has provided us with a collect to be used on Christmas night. It derives from the Latin Missa in gallicantu (mass at cockcrow) within the Sarum Use.
Also showing the influence of its Latin origin is the collect for Christmas Day. It relies on the one within the Book of Common Prayer, which, in turn, echoes a collect from our pre-Reformation past. This, the last of the three collects set for Christmas, with its reference to “adoption and style”, is closer to the prologue of the Gospel in keeping with St John than the homely narrative of St Luke.
FOR the earliest mention of the incarnation within the New Testament, we’d like to show to St Paul; for it’s he who gives us the primary written evidence of Christ’s nativity, which he does without mentioning the stable at Bethlehem. As he was writing a while between the years 54 and 63 (scholars are divided on the precise date), his reference to the nativity predates those in Luke and Matthew:
“Let the identical mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the shape of God, didn’t regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the shape of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being present in human form, he humbled himself and have become obedient to the purpose of death — even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that’s above every name, in order that on the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and each tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2.6-11).
THIS developed Christology, which is present within the concise language of the Christmas collects, informs the opposite texts which might be basic to the Prayer Book, in addition to Common Worship. Among so many examples, probably the most obvious are the Nicene Creed, the Te Deum, the Gloria, and the Eucharistic Prayer in all its manifold number of forms. In all of those, it’s the actual fact of God’s incarnation that’s proclaimed, not the circumstances. Bethlehem gets no mention.
This can be true of the collect for the Sunday after Christmas Day:
1st Sunday of Christmas
Almighty God, who splendidly created us in your individual image and yet more splendidly restored us through your Son Jesus Christ: grant that, as he got here to share in our humanity, so we may share the lifetime of his divinity; who’s alive. . . Common Worship
This collect derives from the Leonine Sacramentary, and was the collect for the Octave of Christmas within the Sarum Use. For some reason, Cranmer didn’t use it within the 1549 Prayer Book, however the Liturgical Commission has included it as one in all the collects provided in Common Worship for the First Sunday of Christmas. It echoes Genesis 1.26: “Then God said, “Let us make humankind [Adam] in our own image,” thus recognising God’s incarnation in Christ because the pivot and turning point within the story of the human race.
The Revd Adrian Leak is a retired priest. His most up-to-date publication is After the Order of Melchizedek: Memoirs of an Anglican priest (Book Guild, 2022).
