Christmas in the 1928 BCP

Christmas in the 1928 BCP is the Prayer Book celebration of the Nativity of Christ in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. In the 1928 book Christmas is not only a calendar date but a short liturgical season: the Christmas Day collect is carried through the octave, the Holy Communion service may use a second set of propers when Communion is celebrated twice, the Daily Office receives Christmas antiphonal and scriptural sentences, and the Eucharistic Proper Preface confesses the Incarnation as the ground of cleansing from sin.

Christmastide in the Propers

The 1928 propers introduce the feast with the heading "CHRISTMASTIDE" and the full traditional title "The Nativity of our Lord, or the Birthday of Christ, commonly called Christmas Day." The collect moves from the gift of the only-begotten Son to regeneration, adoption, and daily renewal by the Holy Spirit:

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen. This Collect is to be said daily throughout the Octave.

The collect is Trinitarian and soteriological. The Father gives the Son; the Son takes human nature "upon him" and is born of the Virgin; the Church asks that those made children "by adoption and grace" may be renewed by the Spirit. The prayer therefore treats Christmas as more than recollection of Bethlehem. It asks that the Incarnation bear fruit in regenerate life.

Percy Dearmer identifies the Christmas Day collect as one of the English Prayer Book collects composed for 1549 rather than simply translated from the older Latin sacramentaries:

The Collect of the Day is generally, as we have seen, an ancient Latin prayer translated from the Sarum Missal by Cranmer or another. Most are from the Communion Service of S. Leo (c. 450), or of Gelasius (c. 480), or of S. Gregory (c. 580). But nineteen [6/7] (including the First and Second Sundays in Advent, Christmas Day, Quinquagesima Sunday, and the First and Second Sundays after Easter) were specially written for the Prayer Book of 1549; and three, as we have seen, were added when our Prayer Book took its present form in 1662.

Appointed Epistle and Gospel

The Christmas Day Epistle, Hebrews i. 1, presents the Son as God's final speech, the maker of the worlds, the brightness of divine glory, and the one who has purged sins:

GOD, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

The appointed Gospel, St. John i. 1, interprets the Nativity through the eternal Word. The Christmas mystery is not merely that a child is born, but that the Word who is God is made flesh:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

The sequence of collect, Hebrews, and John makes the doctrinal center clear. The child born of Mary is the eternal Son, and the purpose of his birth includes cleansing from sin and making believers children by adoption and grace.

First Communion on Christmas Day

The 1928 book preserves the American Prayer Book provision for a different collect, epistle, and gospel when Holy Communion is celebrated twice on Christmas Day:

If in any Church the Holy Communion be twice celebrated on Christmas Day, the following Collect, Epistle, and Gospel may be used at the first Communion. O GOD, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thine only Son Jesus Christ; Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our Judge, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

This optional first-Communion collect links the first and second advents. The Church receives Christ joyfully as Redeemer at his birth, and asks to behold him confidently when he comes as Judge. The appointed Epistle, Titus ii. 11, carries the same structure: grace has appeared, trains holy living, and directs the Church toward "that blessed hope" and Christ's glorious appearing. The appointed Gospel, St. Luke ii. 1, supplies the Bethlehem narrative of manger, shepherds, angelic proclamation, and "Glory to God in the highest."

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere connect this Christmas provision to older Western liturgical practice:

For Christmas the old Roman Books contained three Masses besides the Mass of the Vigil, and at each of them the prophetical lesson was retained side by side with the Epistle and Gospel. This arrangement was at first local and due to the fact that there were three Stational Masses said at Rome on Christmas Day, but afterwards it became general elsewhere. In 1549 the service of the Vigil was dropped out and provision was made for only two Communions on this day, the Collect, Epistle and Gospel of the midnight Mass being specified for the first Communion, and those of the Mass of the day for the second Communion.

Daily Office and Eucharistic Marks

Christmas also appears in the 1928 Daily Office. At Morning Prayer, a Christmas invitatory sentence may be sung or said with the Venite from Christmas Day until the Epiphany:

On Christmas Day and until the Epiphany. - Alleluia. Unto us a child is born : O come, let us adore him.

At Evening Prayer, the Christmas sentence is from Revelation xxi. 3, so that the office reads the Nativity in light of God's dwelling with his people:

Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

The Holy Communion office gives Christmas two further markers. First, the Nicene Creed is required on Christmas Day. Second, the Proper Preface is appointed "upon Christmas Day, and seven days after":

Provided, That the Nicene creed shall be said on Christmas-day, Easter-day, Ascension-day, Whitsunday, and Trinity-Sunday.

Upon Christmas Day, and seven days after.

BECAUSE thou didst give Jesus Christ, thine only Son, to be born as at this time for us; who, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, was made very man, of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin. Therefore with Angels, etc.

The Creed requirement guards the doctrine of the feast, while the Proper Preface gives the eucharistic thanksgiving its Christmas content. Its clauses confess the Son's true humanity, virginal conception by the Holy Ghost, sinlessness, and saving purpose "to make us clean from all sin."

Dearmer notes this Prayer Book pattern of marking great festivals by Proper Prefaces:

Some special days are further marked out. The Great Festivals (Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday) have Proper Prefaces at Holy Communion.

Octave, Sundays, and Epiphany

The 1928 book carries Christmas forward through the octave and the days before Epiphany. If additional days occur before the Sunday after Christmas Day, the Christmas Day collect, epistle, and gospel are used for them. The First Sunday after Christmas repeats the Christmas Day collect, then joins Galatians iv with Matthew i:

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Blunt interprets that Sunday as the continuation of Christmas Day rather than a separate theme:

The Lord's Day within the Octave of Christmas carries on, of necessity, the idea of the preceding festival, forming a kind of "Low Sunday" to Christmas Day itself. There is no change of Collect, but the Epistle and Gospel strike a new chord in the harmony of the Eucharistic Scriptures. On Christmas Day they memorialized the condescension of the Word of God in becoming Son of Man: on this day they set forth the exaltation of human Nature by that condescension.

The Second Sunday after Christmas Day was added in the 1928 book. Its collect is brief but theologically dense:

ALMIGHTY God, who hast poured upon us the new light of thine incarnate Word; Grant that the same light enkindled in our hearts may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This collect condenses the Christmas Gospel into prayer. The "incarnate Word" recalls John i; "new light" recalls the true Light that shines in darkness; "shine forth in our lives" turns doctrine into sanctification. Its appointed Epistle, Isaiah lxi. 1, and Gospel, St. Matthew ii. 19, extend Christmastide from the manger to anointed proclamation, deliverance, exile, return, and the hidden life at Nazareth.

Procter and Frere summarize the broader season from Christmas to Epiphany as a series designed around the humanity of Christ:

From Christmas to Epiphany the design of the proper services is to set forth the humanity of our Saviour; and from Epiphany to Septuagesima to show the divine nature manifested by his miracles.

Their account of the calendar also explains why Christmas governs nearby fixed feasts:

Of the immoveable feasts some depend upon Christmas, some are simply anniversaries, some are merely fixed days of commemoration. Thus The Annunciation of Mary is nine months before Christmas, S. John Baptist's Nativity six months before, The Circumcision eight days and The Purification forty days after. The Visitation seems to be placed on July 2, so as to be the first day after the Octave of S. John Baptist's Day: a date shortly after Lady Day was undesirable because it would so often fall either in Holy Week or Easter week. The three great festivals on the days following Christmas are not anniversaries but commemorations, which were placed there so as to be in close relation to Christmas.

Theological Reading

The 1928 BCP reads Christmas through four connected claims. First, the Son who is born is the eternal Word, "God" and maker of all things. Second, his Incarnation is real humanity: "made very man, of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother." Third, his birth has saving purpose: he purges sins, saves his people, makes believers children by adoption and grace, and makes them clean from all sin. Fourth, Christmas is ordered toward worship and holy living: the Creed is confessed, the Proper Preface is sung, the Venite calls the Church to adore the child born for us, and the Second Sunday after Christmas asks that the light of the incarnate Word shine forth in Christian lives.

In this way the 1928 Christmas observance joins Scripture, collect, eucharistic thanksgiving, and Daily Office devotion. It preserves a classical Anglican pattern in which doctrine is not detached from worship: the Incarnation is proclaimed in appointed lessons, confessed in the Creed, prayed in collects, and offered back to God in thanksgiving.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Christmas Day (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Sunday after Christmas Day (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Second Sunday after Christmas Day (1928 BCP)
• Proper Prefaces (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer at the Society of Archbishop Justus
• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII