We celebrate Christmas with forty days of fasting beforehand, special services on Christmas Eve and the feast day itself, and twelve days of celebration afterward. It’s not a one-day event. It’s a season.
The Nativity Fast starts November 15 and runs through December 24. That’s longer than most people expect. We’re abstaining from meat, dairy, fish, wine, and oil during most of this period, though your priest will give specific guidance about what days allow fish or wine. But fasting isn’t just about food. It’s about prayer, confession, almsgiving, and making room in your life for what’s coming. The point isn’t to white-knuckle your way through six weeks without cheese. The point is to prepare yourself to receive Christ.
When Christmas Eve arrives, we serve the Royal Hours in the morning (in some parishes) and then the Vesperal Liturgy in the evening. Some churches do a midnight liturgy. Others wait until Christmas morning. Either way, the liturgy is the center of everything. We’re not just commemorating something that happened two thousand years ago. We’re encountering the Incarnation itself.
Christmas Day means the festal Divine Liturgy with its specific hymns and readings. The troparion for the Nativity gets right to the heart of it: “Your Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the light of wisdom.” God became man so that we could become like God. That’s theosis. That’s what we’re celebrating.
And then the feast continues. We don’t pack up Christmas on December 26. The Church keeps celebrating through the afterfeast, which lasts until the eve of Theophany on January 6. Those twelve days aren’t just leftover time. They’re part of the liturgical season, with special hymns continuing in the services.
When is Christmas, exactly?
Here’s where it gets confusing for newcomers. Most Antiochian parishes celebrate on December 25, same as Western Christians. But some Orthodox churches celebrate on January 7 because they follow the Old Julian calendar. It’s still December 25 on that calendar. The date hasn’t changed. The calendar has.
At our parish, we’re on December 25. Your Baptist relatives will have already done their thing, which can actually be nice because it means you’re not competing for family time. You can go to their celebration and then have your own liturgical feast.
Food and family
Once the fast breaks on Christmas Day, we eat. Antiochian families often have traditional Middle Eastern dishes, special sweets, lamb, rice dishes that vary by family. Your grandmother’s recipe matters here. This isn’t about following some universal Orthodox menu. It’s about keeping the traditions your family brought with them.
But the meal comes after liturgy. That’s important. We don’t rush home to open presents or start cooking before we’ve been to church. The Eucharist comes first. Everything else follows from that.
Gift-giving happens, but it’s not the main event. Historically, Orthodox cultures gave gifts on St. Nicholas Day (December 6) or St. Basil’s Day (January 1), not Christmas itself. Some families still do that. Others have adapted to the American context where kids expect presents on Christmas morning. That’s a pastoral question each family works out. Just don’t let the presents eclipse the liturgy.
What makes it different
If you’re coming from a Protestant background, the biggest difference is probably the fasting. Forty days of preparation seems extreme until you realize that we’re getting ready for God becoming human. That deserves more than hanging a wreath.
The other big difference is that Christmas isn’t a decision or a feeling. It’s a liturgical reality we enter through the services. You can’t have Orthodox Christmas at home by yourself. You need the Church. You need the liturgy. You need the community of believers gathered to receive Christ in the Eucharist.
And there’s no sentimentality about it. We’re not singing “Silent Night” and getting misty-eyed about baby Jesus in the manger. We’re singing Byzantine hymns about the Creator of the universe taking on human flesh to destroy death. It’s cosmic. It’s earthy. It’s both at once.
The secular Christmas that dominates Southeast Texas in December, the mall Santas, the inflatable lawn decorations, the Hallmark movies, has almost nothing to do with what we’re doing. That’s not a judgment. It’s just a fact. We’re on a different calendar, literally and spiritually. When your coworkers at the plant are complaining about how tired they are of Christmas music on December 26, you’re just getting started.
Come to the services. Keep the fast as well as you can. Bring your family to liturgy before you do anything else on Christmas Day. Receive communion. Then go home and feast. That’s how we do Christmas.
