Every year liturgically-minded pastors and parishioners bemoan the intrusion of Christmas upon the season of Advent. It’s not that we don’t think Christmas is important. Quite the opposite—it’s so important that the Church anticipates the Nativity of Our Lord with the month-long penitential season of Advent. But since our sinful world has no use for repentance, Advent is largely ignored—unless, perhaps, it provides a market for calendars offering 25 varieties of chocolate, jam, tea, and, I kid you not, LEGO Star Wars. And while the rest of the world is busy packing up the Christmas decorations the day after the presents have been unwrapped, we know that the Church’s twelve-day celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord has just begun.
So every year the faithful stubbornly sing Advent hymns (which are quite good, by the way) for the four Sundays preceding Christmas, refusing to surrender to the commercialized backwards creep of Christmas. Every year, that is, except this year. Because this year Christmas is supposed to intrude on Advent—hence the clickbait title of this post. This year, only three of Advent’s four Sundays are observed.
Every seven years on average, the First Sunday of Advent falls on its latest possible date, December 3rd. And when this happens, Christmas Eve overlaps with the Fourth Sunday of Advent. According to the old liturgical rubrics, Christmas Eve takes precedence over Advent 4. So when your church gathers for the Divine Service on the morning of December 24th, you should properly expect to hear the Propers for Christmas Eve.
But doesn’t “eve” mean evening? Etymologically, yes, but liturgically the entire day preceding a feast is its Eve or Vigil. (Vigil is the more appropriate title, and it avoids any confusion associated with the word “eve”.) Thus the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord can rightly be celebrated this year on December 24th during the regular Sunday morning mass. (In my parish I inherited a lessons & carols service on the night of Christmas Eve, which we will observe in addition to the early morning service.)
Because the Vigil falls on a Sunday, the Alleluia is said. Likewise the Creed. (When a vigil falls on any other days of the week these are typically omitted.) The color of the day remains violet, since the Vigil of Christmas is the final day within the season of Advent. For this reason the Gloria in Excelsis is not said at the Vigil, but returns in all its angelic glory in the first mass of Christmas Day, commonly known as the “Midnight Mass.”
For those who wish to make use of them, here are the historic Propers for the Vigil of Christmas. Also provided below is a sneak peek at the month of December from the 2023/2024 calendar for The Lutheran Missal. Those who signed up as field testers have already received access to this calendar, along with the readings for the listed occasions. Note that this year St. Nicholas and St. Lucia displace the ferial readings on the first two Wednesdays of Advent, and St. Sylvester (12/31) is celebrated a day early because it is displaced by the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas (Christmas 1).
Addendum: Sources for “old liturgical rubrics”
The Lutheran Missal 
Thanks for this, Father Evan. I was thinking that, from a liturgical point of view, a commemoration of Advent IV by means of a collect would not be out of line. Your thoughts?
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The Church’s liturgists may have had something like that in mind when they assigned the Alleluia for Advent IV to the Vigil of Christmas.
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Which “old liturgical rubrics” are you referring to? Could you please quote them and cite them? Thank you.
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Certainly. Since I can’t add images in a comment here, I’ll do an addendum to the original post.
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Thank you for the citations. Your thorough research is most appreciated. I have two follow-up questions:
1) In your post giving the citations you stated, “Rather than trying to explain all the rules, some dioceses opted instead to publish a detailed sort of calendar, a directory, listing exactly what to do on every day of the year.” So SOME dioceses celebrated the vigil on December 24 if December 24 was a Sunday. Were there any dioceses that did not do this?
2) In this post you stated, “But doesn’t “eve” mean evening? Etymologically, yes, but liturgically the entire day preceding a feast is its Eve or Vigil. (Vigil is the more appropriate title, and it avoids any confusion associated with the word “eve”.) Thus the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord can rightly be celebrated this year on December 24th during the regular Sunday morning mass.” If “eve” and “vigil” do not actually refer to the EVEning or “the act of keeping awake at times when sleep is customary” (as Merriam-Webster defines it — though, to be fair, MW also includes as a later definition “the day before a religious feast observed as a day of spiritual preparation”), then would you apply the same logic in order to start the Easter Vigil at 9:00 in the morning on Holy Saturday, thus supplanting the Holy Saturday propers?
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1) Of the 60 diocesan missals we have in our database, none give an explicit rubric concerning the occurrence of the Christmas Vigil with Advent IV. However, 53 of them provide an Alleluia verse, which may only be sung when the Vigil falls on a Sunday. (Such is the universally attested practice for the Alleluia with any vigil—only sung on a Sunday.) The implication is that at least 53 of 60 sources expect the Christmas Vigil to take precedence over Advent IV. And it is not likely that the remaining 7 sources are attempting to establish a minority tradition by their silence. Rather, since the Alleluia for the Vigil is generally borrowed from Advent IV, it is likely that the 7 silent sources simply expect one to follow the well attested tradition of their neighbors. (The missals tend to assume that the reader has a certain base level of liturgical knowledge, an assumption one could not make today.)
The missals provide a strong case for celebrating the Vigil on a Sunday, but it is a case made by implication. The directories, on the other hand, spell it out explicitly. Only a few directories have survived—or at least have been digitized and made available to us. But of those few, all are agreed. We have not found any late-medieval source of any liturgical genre that directs one to do anything other than celebrate the Vigil of Christmas when it falls on a Sunday.
2) The Vigil of All Saints, even in its present corrupted form, may be helpful here. We consider Halloween to be the entire day of October 31st, not just after the sun goes down, even though, etymologically, Halloween does mean Hallowed Eve. The unique rituals associated with Halloween are generally performed after dark—though not necessarily. People may dress up to go to school or work. This concept applies to any vigil. Although a vigil will necessarily have a strong connection with the evening, as vigil literally meant “to keep watch through the night”, liturgically speaking, the entire day is the vigil. The Vigil of All Saints is the day of October 31st. The Vigil of St. Andrew is the day of November 29th.
Though evening may be the default time, a mass for a vigil may be celebrated without liturgical offense at any time during the calendar day, particularly when the congregation is already accustomed to meeting at a certain time on that day. When a vigil happens to fall on a Sunday and it is of sufficient rank as to displace the usual Sunday mass, there is no reason it must be celebrated at any time other than the usual time. (If a congregation chooses to move its regular Sunday morning mass to evening for a vigil, this is also perfectly acceptable.)
The great Vigil of Easter is a special case. First, it can only occur on a Saturday, so there is never a question of it displacing a regularly scheduled Sunday morning service. Second, its liturgy, which includes the kindling of new fire, is specifically written for evening. (By the way, the Propers for Holy Saturday in LSB are entirely made up. The Vigil of Easter is the only service for this day. Even the name Holy Saturday is not really correct. The name of the day is the Vigil of Easter.) My point in the original article was that it is acceptable to celebrate the Vigil of Christmas on a Sunday morning, not that all vigils must customarily be celebrated in the morning.
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Again, thank you very much for your thorough response. This information is most helpful. But I do have more follow-up questions.
1) Obviously, as you pointed out, the Easter Vigil is intended for the evening, not the morning. And, as you also pointed out, the Easter Vigil will never supplant a Sunday. So let’s compare this to the Pentecost Vigil/Pentecost Eve, which also will never supplant a Sunday.
Around the year 1500, what time of day would the Pentecost Vigil/Pentecost Eve have been celebrated? Would it have been a morning service or an evening service?
2) As an addendum to that question, did these dioceses observe any of the feast days in the evening, apart from the regular prayer offices? That is, would there be an evening “divine service,” similar to how many congregations have such evening services (especially throughout the week) today?
3) These questions lead to my ultimate question: since the Easter Vigil is clearly intended to be an evening service (even if the entire day is called the vigil); and since the Church built everything off of the celebration of Easter; and since they gave other feast days vigils as well, which have come into our modern language and usage as “EVEs;” could it not also have been the case with December 24 falling on Sunday that the Christmas Vigil was not actually celebrated until the time of vigils and the time of evening, thus permitting Advent 4 to be retained?
Again, thank you for the information you are providing. The history is quite interesting.
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I’ll do my best to answer your latest round of questions, though my colleague, Fr. Stefan Gramenz, who is much better acquainted with the Liturgy of the Hours, may choose to add his thoughts.
The single mass of the day was usually said around 10:00 am, between Terce (9 am) and Sext (12 noon). A few noted occasions had more than one mass, such as, Christmas Day (midnight, dawn, and day) and The Nativity of St. John the Baptist (dawn and day). Apart from exceptions like these, which are generally noted by clear rubrics, two masses are not said on the occurrence of two feasts. Instead, the lesser occasion is either transferred, observed by means of a single collect in the greater mass, or omitted entirely.
Having studied the diocesan directories available to us, I’m aware of two other circumstances in which an occurrence results in two masses being said:
1) Feast/Vigil of an Apostle with an Ember Day, in which case the Feast/Vigil mass is said first! (eg: “Missa prima de vigilia secunda de tempore”—Freising Directory, Folio 1v)
2) Feast/Vigil of an Apostle with the veneration of the BVM on Saturday (same rubric, same source, folio 6r)
Ember days are never transferred or omitted, even for a greater Feast/Vigil of an Apostle, so it seems an exception had to be made here by allowing a second mass. And many exceptions were made for the BVM, even some contrary to the Evangelical doctrine, but that is a different matter entirely.
Regarding the Vigil of Pentecost: Unlike the Easter Vigil, it could be said at any time of the day. Its liturgy is nearly identical to that of the Ember Saturday masses, which are not vigils. (As far as I know, the Easter Vigil is the only vigil that requires evening.)
In conclusion: I am aware of no evidence at all that Advent IV and the Vigil of Christmas would have been celebrated on the same day. On the other hand, the evidence for observing only the Vigil of Christmas when it occurs with Advent IV is very strong. Though it would by no means be wicked to celebrate two masses on this day, it is certain that this has not been the historic practice of the Church.
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There are some great questions here that require a more thorough response with documentary evidence, so keep your eye out for another post on the timing of vigil masses in the late medieval/early modern period.
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Evan,
As I was preparing the Propers you sent for the Vigil on the 24th, I noticed something odd. The termination for the Collect seems odd. It is an address to the Father (“O God”) but the termination switches to an address to the Son (“our Judge; who livest etc.”). Is this correct? If so, it’s an odd switching of Persons to whom the Collect is addressed, in the midst of the Collect. If it’s correct, then it’s rather unique, isn’t it?
Rev Burnell Eckardt PhD Pastor, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Kewanee, IL Editor-in-chief, Gottesdienst ________________________________
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We have not officially worked with the collects yet. The one included here is an unofficial rendering that may indeed need some attention.
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Ah good to know. So it should probably terminate with “through the same Jesus Christ our Lord who liveth erc.”Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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I know I’m late to the conversation, but it’s not like this will never happen again, short of Jesus’ return, so I’ll add my comments that I’ve been meaning to add for several weeks (but failed), now updated after catching up on the comments and the supplementary post.
I’ve appreciated these posts, as they’ve answered questions I had already a year ago.
The statement above that clarifies much for me is, “Apart from exceptions like these, which are generally noted by clear rubrics, two masses are not said on the occurrence of two feasts. Instead, the lesser occasion is either transferred, observed by means of a single collect in the greater mass, or omitted entirely.” I would have never guessed that.
But then my question is this: when we are having trouble gathering our members as often as used to be done (e.g., among other feasts being ignored altogether, Reformation, Epiphany, and Ascension being transferred to Sundays more and more often), when they actually have a habit of attending church twice on one day (namely, when 12/24 falls on a Sunday), why would we want to encourage this old tradition that gives our people one more reason to lesson their attendance? Even though it may have been universal custom at one time, and certainly not wrong to do, I can’t see the benefits of resuming that custom.
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Our reforming principle as Lutherans is to favor old traditions insofar as they illuminate Christ and the Gospel. When they cease to do this, they must be discarded. But there is no danger of that here. The old tradition is to offer four masses for Christmas: Vigil, Midnight, Dawn, and Day. (Christmas is one of those exceptions mentioned above with multiple masses on the same day.) When Advent IV and the Vigil occur on the same day, this adds a fifth possible mass to the mix. My article was intended to give historic guidance for which of these five masses to prefer (three of which could theoretically be held on the day of the Vigil), not to limit the number of times people can go to church. Christmas trumps Advent. But by all means, let’s encourage our people to attend as many services as their parish offers!
With Advent IV set aside, that still leaves four Christmas masses, which is likely more than 99% of our parishes can or will offer. Some of these four masses will be omitted. But the Vigil mass should not be omitted in favor of Advent IV—that is the point of my article. When Advent IV and the Christmas Vigil occur on the same day, the regular Sunday mass becomes that of the Vigil. And if there is an evening mass—and this ought to be encouraged—it is Christmas Midnight. (The new liturgical day begins at sunset, so there’s no problem with starting the midnight mass a few hours early.) And, of course, one cannot properly celebrate the day of Christmas without the Christ-mass. Celebrating it twice, at sunrise and later in the day, would be a wonderful and evangelical custom to recover.
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