When does Christmas end? The answers - plural! - might surprise you. Depending on who you ask, the Christmas season ends:
·December 26: If retail were any indication, secular culture holds that Christmas begins just after Thanksgiving and ends at 12:00 AM on December 26, just in time for the stores to tear down Christmas displays and start putting out candy hearts for Valentine’s Day.
·January 1: All the major feasts of the Church year have an “octave,” a period of eight days during which each day’s Mass is celebrated as though it were the feast itself. January 1 is considered the “Octave day” of Christmas, and the intervening days are said to be “within the Octave of Christmas.”
·January 6: The “twelve days of Christmas” end with the commemoration of the Magi’s visit on the feast of Epiphany, celebrated each year on January 6.
·January 10: The liturgical season of Christmas (situated between Advent and Ordinary Time) begins with the vigil Mass on Christmas Eve and ends with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, this year on January 10. Ordinary time begins again on January 11th and will last until the beginning of Lent.
·February 2: Traditionally, the season of Christmastide has always lasted forty days. This corresponds to the forty days of Lent and to the forty days between Easter and Ascension Thursday. The forty days after Christmas end on February 2 with the celebration of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as the Purification of Mary or Candlemas.
In 2021, I pray that the Lord bless you, your guardian angels protect you, and Mary keep you safely under her mantle. And if you’re looking for an excuse to keep your Christmas decorations up for a few more weeks, now you have one.