Collect for Christmas Day (1928 BCP)

Collect for Christmas Day (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed for Christmas Day in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. It prays the doctrine of the Incarnation as a present grace: the Father has given the only-begotten Son to take human nature and to be born of the Virgin, and the Church asks that those made God's children by regeneration, adoption, and grace may be daily renewed by the Holy Spirit.

Text of the Collect

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.

The address, "Almighty God," places Christmas within divine initiative rather than human sentiment. The first clause confesses the Father's gift: the Son is not merely sent as a teacher, but is the "only-begotten Son" who takes "our nature upon him." The next phrase, "as at this time," marks the feast liturgically, while "born of a pure virgin" connects the collect with the creedal confession of the Incarnation.

The petition turns from Bethlehem to the baptized life. Because the Son has taken human nature, the Church asks that those who are "regenerate" and made children "by adoption and grace" may be renewed daily by the Holy Spirit. The collect is therefore both Christological and sanctifying: it joins the once-for-all birth of Christ to the continuing renewal of Christians.

Appointed Lessons

The appointed Epistle, Hebrews i. 1, supports the collect's high Christology. The child born at Christmas is the Son through whom God has finally spoken, through whom the worlds were made, and by whom sins are purged:

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.

This lesson gives doctrinal weight to "thy only-begotten Son." The Son who takes "our nature" is also the brightness of divine glory and the express image of the Father's person. The collect's petition for renewal rests on the Epistle's saving work: the Son who is born has "by himself purged our sins."

The appointed Gospel, St. John i. 1, supplies the deepest scriptural frame for the collect. Christmas is the Nativity of the eternal Word:

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.

The same Gospel then states the mystery that the collect prays in compressed form:

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 collect's "take our nature upon him" is the Prayer Book's idiom for "the Word was made flesh." Its "adoption and grace" echoes the Gospel's promise that those who receive him are given power to become the sons of God, and its prayer for daily renewal follows from the life and light manifested in the incarnate Word.

Octave and Eucharistic Use

The 1928 Propers immediately extend the collect beyond the feast itself:

This Collect is to be said daily throughout the Octave.

That rubric matters for interpretation. The collect is not a single-day ornament but the daily prayer of Christmas week. Its request that believers may "daily be renewed" is enacted by the Prayer Book's daily repetition of the same collect through the octave.

The Holy Communion office gives the same feast a required creedal and eucharistic setting. On Christmas Day the Nicene Creed must be said, and the Proper Preface confesses the true humanity and sinlessness of Christ:

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 Proper Preface explains the collect's saving logic. Christ takes human nature "for us"; he is "made very man" of the Virgin's substance; he is without spot of sin; and his Nativity is ordered "to make us clean from all sin." The collect asks that this gift be realized in regenerate and renewed life.

Historical and Liturgical Interpretation

Percy Dearmer identifies the Christmas Day collect as one of the collects composed for the first English Prayer Book rather than a translation of an older Latin collect:

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.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere explain the older Western Christmas pattern behind the Prayer Book's Christmas Communion provision:

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: in 1552 the provision for the first Communion was omitted, and thus only the Epistle and Gospel of the High Mass, with a newly composed Collect, which were used at the second or principal Communion, are retained in the present service.

Their summary helps locate the 1928 collect in the larger Christmas system: the Prayer Book's principal Christmas collect is linked with the day service, while the American book also provides an optional first Communion collect and lessons when Holy Communion is celebrated twice.

Procter and Frere also describe the purpose of the season that begins with this collect:

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 of the Son of Man by relating in the Gospels some of His first miracles.

John Henry Blunt's commentary on the Sunday after Christmas shows how the octave continues the collect's adoption language. Because that Sunday repeats the Christmas collect in the Prayer Book tradition, Blunt reads the next Sunday's lessons as unfolding the effect of the Incarnation upon human nature:

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 result is a tightly connected Anglican reading of Christmas. The collect confesses the Son's assumption of human nature; Hebrews confesses his divine glory and purging of sins; John confesses the Word made flesh; the Proper Preface confesses his true humanity and sinlessness; and the octave carries the prayer into daily renewal.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Christmas in the 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: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels
• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer at the Society of Archbishop Justus
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII