Christmastide

The older shape of Christmastide is the twelve days, from the Nativity on 25 December to the eve of Epiphany on 6 January, a span the church treated as festal from late antiquity; the Council of Tours in 567 already speaks of the days between the two feasts as a single festal tide. The twelve days gathered a dense cluster of observances.

The feast of Stephen, the first martyr, follows Christmas immediately on 26 December; John the Evangelist and the Holy Innocents follow on the two days after; the octave day of Christmas, 1 January, closes the feast's first week; and the whole tide runs out at Twelfth Night, the eve of Epiphany, which European custom kept with misrule, cakes and the crowning of bean kings. Much of the folklore of Christmas, the twelve days of the carol included, is the folklore of this span rather than of the single day.

The modern Roman calendar draws the season's boundary differently, ending Christmastide at the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the Sunday after Epiphany, so the season now varies slightly in length with the calendar of a given year. The atlas records the season in both shapes, the folk and older liturgical twelve days and the current Roman definition, because both are still in living use, in churches and in customs that outlast their calendars.

Christmastide is stretched between two feasts that celebrate the same mystery from different directions. In the West the anchor is Christmas, the Nativity kept on 25 December, first securely recorded at Rome in the Chronography of 354; in the East the older anchor is Epiphany on 6 January, the feast of manifestation, which in the Eastern churches celebrates above all the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Each feast eventually crossed into the other's territory, Christmas travelling east in the late fourth century, Epiphany west, and the season between them became the bridge holding the pair together. The division of labour that resulted still shapes the calendars. In the West, Epiphany attached itself to the visit of the Magi, the manifestation to the nations, and the baptism was given its own feast at the season's end; in the East, 6 January remains the great feast of the waters, with the solemn blessing of rivers and fonts, and the Nativity stands beside it as a distinct celebration.

Churches keeping the Julian reckoning add a further layer, their 25 December falling on the civil 7 January, which is why the world's Christmases are spread across a fortnight. The season is therefore not one feast with an echo but a conversation between two ancient feasts, and its length is the space the conversation needs.