A Teaching Message for Faith: Reclaiming Holidays as Holy Days
Week of the Second Sunday of Christmas
and Day of Epiphany,
January 8, 2026
Reclaiming Holidays as Holy Days
Dear People of God:
How was Christmas 2025 for you? I pray that it was a good one. My Christmas this year was unlike any that I can remember. Never have I missed sharing leadership for Christmas Eve worship because I was ill. Indeed, my case of the flu that began in earnest on Christmas Eve completely colored my twelve days of Christmas, which were largely spent in solitude with my cats. No Christmas tree (too tempting for the cats). Minimal gift exchange with family. No parties. No last-minute shopping. No frenzied activity. I normally spend the twelve days of Christmas staying with my son, but not this year. His mom was home for the season when she otherwise normally travels. So, Christmastide this year was stripped of its ornamental decorations to the bare branches of the tree, as it were. Images come to mind of the minimalist Charlie Brown Christmas tree before his friends contributed what they had to decorate it to make it beautiful.
I’m not inviting a pity party here. It was what it was. Every Christmas is inevitably different from the others, shaped as they are by our particular circumstances in any given year. But bare-boned Christmas 2025 gave me the opportunity to see the forest for the trees and to regard these twelve days of celebration with some fresh eyes. In short, I now see more deeply that the holidays are in their essence, and at their root, holy days. I’ve always known this, but this year really brought the holiness home to me.
Some of the faithful get bent out of shape when people greet others during this season with “Happy Holidays,” rather than “Merry Christmas.” But let’s set aside the culture wars for a moment and reclaim the origins of the word. Holiday comes from old English simply meaning “holy day.” And that’s in essence what holidays are when stripped of all the attachments and wrapping paper and busyness and commercialization of gift-giving and on and on. Think, too, of the origins of the word “Christmas.” It, too, is from old English meaning “Christ’s Mass.” At its root, then, Christmas focuses on the worship, the liturgy, that celebrates Jesus’ birth. Then, some also complain when Christmas is abbreviated “Xmas,” as if Christ is x’ed or crossed out on his birthday. But think of it this way: X is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ. The single letter X has in fact been an abbreviation for Christ dating from the 11th century. The letter X is also evocative of the cross to which even the baby Jesus is headed later in his life for our salvation. Thus, stripping bare the words associated with the Christ Mass Holy Days, pruning them of the cultural and often quite secular add on’s, what we have left are holy days that focus our attention on the true meaning of the season: that Christ was born ultimately to die and to rise again for the salvation of the whole world. And the center of our Christmas celebrations is the Mass, that is, our liturgical celebrations and observances related to the Incarnation and the outcomes that emanate from Jesus’ birth.
There are a full twelve days of Christmas feasting. Easter wins with fifty days of Eastertide, but twelve days is still a lot of time for holy celebration. And the Holy Days of Christmastide are chock full of other lesser liturgical commemorations and festivals. So, what does it mean to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas? The twelve days of Christmas are not about the twelve different gifts that my true love gave to me. No. To robustly celebrate and observe the twelve days of Christmas means to observe and celebrate the other named festivals during these days, claiming each as holy days in their own right, and not simply overlooking them. So, what are those other holy days during the holidays? Let’s take a closer look, seeing them in their distinctiveness but also in light of and in relation to the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ at Christ Mass.
Christmas Eve on December 24: The focal point for us is liturgy on Christmas Eve, a high point when even infrequent church-goers appear in our midst. And there are a lot of visitors as well, seekers if you will. It’s a time when the church’s worship gains the attention of the wider world. Our music and rituals tend to be over the top on this holy night. And rightly so to proclaim Jesus’ birth to the world with joyful exuberance.
Christmas Day on December 25: Some churches still have liturgy on Christmas Day morning. In contrast to Christmas Eve, these services are attended by fewer persons and may be more subdued or contemplative in nature. Both the high celebration of Christmas Eve and the more intimate, quiet celebrations of Christmas Day are in keeping with the spirit of Christmas. One complements the other quite appropriately as each gives expression to the different moods of the festival. Even if we don’t schedule a Christmas Day liturgy, we can still settle into a more contemplative observance on December 25th once all the frantic busyness fades away.
Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, on December 26: The lovely reverberations of the celebrations of Jesus’ birth are still felt in our bodies, minds, and souls when we commemorate Stephen, among the first deacons of the early church, and the first martyr of Christianity. Deacons were named and set apart to oversee fulfilling the concrete needs of God’s less fortunate people, giving the apostles the freedom to proclaim God’s saving word. But deacons also proclaimed the word, and Stephen was particularly outspoken, which provoked those opposed to the gospel to stone him to death. What does remembering the first martyr in close proximity to Christmas tell us? Jesus was not born into a warm and fuzzy reality. No. His birth would be for the falling and rising of many, and would be a sign that will be opposed, according to the seer Simeon, and that a sword would pierce his mother, Mary’s heart, too (cf. Luke 2:25-35). Proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ comes at a high cost for some. This reality cannot be divorced from the preciousness of the nativity. The good news is that God in Christ enters into the fullness of human reality, not just the nice parts.
John, Apostle and Evangelist, on December 27: During the twelve holy days of Christmas, we also celebrate John as one of the twelve apostles, and according to tradition (though much current scholarship disputes this), the author of the fourth Gospel that bears the name John. It is John’s Gospel that gives us the gift of the insight of Jesus Christ as the Word of God who was with God at creation, and who, in fact, was and is God, God’s word made flesh to dwell among us full of grace and truth. When we celebrate John and the Johannine school of thought, we also celebrate the baby Jesus as the very Word of God who is fully human and fully divine. And it’s the story from John, chapter one, that is, in fact, the gospel appointed for Christmas Day.
Holy Innocents on December 28: Another one of the holy days of Christmas involves realities that are nothing short of deeply tragic, namely, that King Herod in threatened reaction to the news of the birth of a king, Jesus, whom he feared was a threat to his reign, had all of the first-born males in the region killed. These are the Holy Innocents. The lesson for us in locating this commemoration amidst the holy days of Christmas is similar to the lesson of Stephen: somehow the birth of the baby Jesus, far from being innocuous, was perceived as and was in fact a major threat to the imperial powers that were in Jesus’ day, even as the true message of the gospel of love, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, humility, peace, and justice is a threat to those in power today.
Name of Jesus on January 1: The older name of this festival day is Circumcision of Our Lord. In Jewish tradition, male children would be circumcised on the eighth day after their birth and also named on that day. Mary and Joseph were faithful to their Jewish heritage and so complied with tradition. The significance for us is in the name of Jesus – Jesus being a name which means “God saves” or “God is salvation.” But the fact that Jesus’ naming coincides with his circumcision is symbolic for Christians as well in that this was the first occasion of Jesus shedding blood, a foreshadowing of his blood being shed on the cross for our salvation. Just eight days old and Jesus already points to the cross.
Sundays of Christmas: In addition to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the other lesser festivals here named, there are also up to two Sundays of the Christmas season depending on what day of the week Christmas happens to be. The gospel readings appointed for those Sundays relate to Jesus’ early years, but at heart, every Sunday of the year is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. So, once again, even Sundays of Christmas, we have in mind Holy Week and Easter!
Epiphany of Our Lord on January 6: The twelve holy days of Christmas conclude and the next day is another major feast day in the church’s calendar, the Epiphany of Our Lord. This is the day that commemorates the coming of the three Magi or Wise Men to the child Jesus to offer him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Since these three figures were not of Jewish heritage, their coming to the child Jesus represents the revelation – the epiphany – of the good news of Jesus’ birth to the wider nations of the world. Their gifts also point to the nature of Jesus’ significance. Gold suggests Jesus’ kingly reign. Frankincense signifies Jesus’ divine priesthood. Myrrh was a spice used to anoint bodies at death, yet another foreshadowing of Jesus’ death on the cross.
So, there you have it, some brief considerations of the several holy days contained within the twelve days of the Christmas holidays. You can clearly see that these feast days and observances offer a feast of contrasts! The juxtapositions of tender joy with human tragedy and death are poignant in these days. But these juxtapositions get at the real truth behind Jesus’ birth. Jesus was born ultimately to go to the cross, to suffer death for our salvation and to rise again in victory over sin and death. Which is to say, Holy Week and Easter are the principal observances and feasts of the Christian tradition. Think about it: if Jesus had not died and been raised, we would not be here remembering his birth. Jesus would have been forgotten. Or in the words of one of the stanzas of a beloved Christmas carol, “What Child is This”: “Nails, spear shall pierce him through, the cross be borne for me, for you; hail, hail the Word made flesh, the babe, the son of Mary.” (ELW 296)
The twelve holy days of Christmas also point to the meaning of our discipleship, our following of Jesus, that, like Stephen, we are called to take up our crosses when we follow Jesus as well. And when it’s all said and done, this mixing of joy and tragedy is ultimately good news for us and for the world. Good has victory over evil. Life has victory over death. That’s the reason for the season. Sometimes all the trappings – all the boxes and wrapping paper and receipts and frantic activity – get in the way of seeing the bare bones truth.
All of this is admittedly a retrospective, a looking back on what were the Christmas Holy Days of 2025, perspectives admitted to me because of the scaled back nature of my celebrations and observances this year. But may you carry the wisdom of the juxtapositions of the Christ Mass Holy Days into the coming days and months of a New Year, 2026, as you also in your various ways take up your cross to follow Jesus.
Faithfully in the name of Jesus, our Savior, the one who died and who rose again,
Jonathan Linman
Associate Pastor for Teaching, Faith Formation and Spiritual Care
Coming Sunday Teaching Forums
Here is the schedule for our coming Sunday forums – this so that you can be certain to mark your calendars to attend the forums on the topics of interest to you:
January 18 - Wellness: Spiritual Practices for Resilience (Henry Rojas)
February 1 - Justice: Transgender Rights, Local and National Struggles