Commontide
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 1st Sunday of Christmas
Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, kindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Christmas
Because you gave Jesus Christ, your only Son, to be born for us; who, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary his mother, was made truly man, yet without the stain of sin, that we might be cleansed from sin and given the right to become your children.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
The 1st of Epiphany (Baptism of Our Lord)
The Circumcision and Holy Name
Red Letter Day
On January 1 the Church keeps the eighth day after the Nativity, when the child born at Bethlehem was circumcised under the Law and given the name Jesus. The day is first attested as a named observance in Gaul in 567; Rome kept the same date as the Octave of the Lord and took up the circumcision title only by the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The Holy Name was for centuries a separate feast on other dates. The Book of Common Prayer 2019 holds both titles and appoints Luke 2:15-21.
The scriptural basis is Luke 2:21: 'And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.' The observance naturally falls on the octave of Christmas — the eighth day — following the Jewish practice of circumcision on the eighth day (Genesis 17:12; Leviticus 12:3).
The feast has a complex dual identity. The Circumcision feast is ancient, attested from the Council of Tours (567) in the West and from Byzantine calendars by the eighth-ninth century. The Holy Name devotion developed later as a distinct emphasis: medieval Franciscan and Bernardine piety promoted devotion to the Name of Jesus, leading to a separate Holy Name feast established by the fifteenth century. Modern calendars have handled the relationship differently: the 1969 Roman revision dropped both in favor of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God; the 1979 Episcopal BCP kept the Holy Name; ACNA's BCP 2019 preserves the combined title, honoring both the ancient Circumcision emphasis and the medieval Holy Name devotion.
The theological tradition sees Christ's circumcision as his first obedience to the Law he came to fulfill — and his first shedding of blood, prefiguring the Cross. Patristic commentators (Origen, Ambrose) developed the typological significance: the circumcision of the flesh gives way to the circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:29; Colossians 2:11). The Holy Name tradition, growing from medieval devotion, emphasizes the power of the name Jesus itself — 'at the name of Jesus every knee should bow' (Philippians 2:10). The Litany of the Holy Name and the IHS monogram (from the Greek ΙΗΣΟΥΣ) reflect this devotional stream.