The Feast of the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church

The Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Orthodox Church is celebrated in a manner that is both simple and solemn. “Where do you dwell?” the crowd asks Jesus. “Come and see,” He replies (John 1:39). “Come and see” is the principle of all missionary action in the Church. See for yourselves the spiritual beauty of praise that will lead you to heaven! There is no teaching Church and taught Church. The liturgy is the place of teaching for both priest and faithful, united in one single Body—the Church, the Body of Christ. The priest “actualises” the heavenly liturgy for himself and for the people of God.

The liturgy contains the whole of Holy Scripture; the icon, in which the Mother of God, by reason of her “fiat,” occupies a pre-eminent place; the chant and the incense, all inscribed within the Church’s age-old Tradition; the entrance into time beyond time—that of the Lordship of God. The Troparion of Christmas, a poetic hymn specific to this day, is as follows:

“Your Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone upon the world the light of knowledge. For by it those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to adore You, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know You, the Dayspring from on high. O Lord, glory to You!”

A fast of forty days precedes the feast. The liturgy celebrated on this day is that of Saint John Chrysostom. Together with the feast of Pascha, the Nativity constitutes one of the poles around which the entire liturgical year revolves: the first feast is the crowning of the movable feasts, the second that of the fixed feasts. Indeed, behind the newborn Child lies the beginning of the salvation of humanity, potentially accomplished. The recapitulation of the whole history of humanity is fulfilled in the person of Christ, the living icon, who unites divine nature and human nature—two fullnesses gathered into a single divine hypostasis.

The Gospels do not inform us of the exact date of the Nativity. The journey of the Virgin, the shepherds living in the fields and keeping watch by night, and the setting of the manger, according to the Evangelist Luke (2:8), seem to indicate that this event did not take place in winter. Around the year 330, the feast was introduced in Rome and fixed on 25 December, distinct from Epiphany, which was then celebrated on 6 January. From Rome it spread throughout the West; around 376 it appears in Antioch and Caesarea in Cappadocia. In the fourth century, in Jerusalem, Egeria, in her Travel Journal, testifies that the liturgy of the Nativity was celebrated, as at Pascha, in the middle of the night in the basilica of Jerusalem. At the conclusion of the service, the entire people, together with the bishop and the priests, processed while singing: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”