How Do Christians Celebrate Christmas? Worship, Waiting and Giving

Christmas as a ChristianSee all 36 articles in this series

We celebrate Christmas by worshipping the child born in Bethlehem, God himself come to live among us. We go to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, hear the Gospel of his birth and sing carols, and at home we set up the nativity scene, pray, share a meal and give gifts.

Luke tells us how the first people kept Christmas. The shepherds heard the angels, hurried to Bethlehem and found the child. “And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child” (Luke 2:17). Then they went back to the same fields and the same sheep, praising God as they went. Most of what we do at Christmas grows from those few verses. We go to see him, we tell of him, and we carry the praise home.

We celebrate a birth, and we celebrate who was born. We believe that the child Mary laid in the manger is the Son of God made man. Paul wrote to Titus of the day when “the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared” (Titus 3:4), and Catholics hear those words read at the Mass at dawn on Christmas morning. God did not send his love from far away. He came near, small enough to be carried, and he came to save us. The whole meaning of the feast is set out in what is the true meaning of Christmas.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church notices who heard the news first: “Simple shepherds were the first witnesses to this event.” The feast began with working men keeping watch over their sheep in the dark, and it is still meant for people like them.

Western churches keep Christmas on 25 December, and so do the Orthodox, though not all by the same calendar. Most Orthodox Christians count that day by the older Julian calendar, because the Russian Church, which keeps it, is so large, and their 25 December falls on 7 January in ours. Other Orthodox churches, the Orthodox Church in America among them, keep it with the West. So Christmas comes twice each winter, thirteen days apart, and the same child is worshipped both times.

As far as the records show, the first Christians kept no separate feast of his birth, and an Orthodox history says it was first celebrated together with the Epiphany. The first time we find the birth written against 25 December is in a Roman list of feasts made in 354, and its entry for that day is a handful of Latin words, natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae: Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea. More than sixteen centuries later we are still keeping the day that line remembers.

Most churches do, but not all. Some Reformed Christians follow the Westminster Directory of 1645, which says, “There is no day commanded in scripture to be kept holy under the gospel but the Lord’s day.” Jehovah’s Witnesses, who see themselves as Christians, do not keep it either. “Jesus commanded that we commemorate his death, not his birth,” they explain. Whether a Christian should keep the feast at all, and what Scripture says about holy days, is answered in is it a sin to celebrate Christmas?

At Christmas, churches that disagree about much kneel at the same manger. On Christmas morning Catholics hear the shepherds’ visit read aloud at the Mass at dawn. Orthodox Christians sing the hymn of the feast: “Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the light of wisdom!” Martin Luther wrote a Christmas hymn, “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,” first printed in 1535, and some scholars believe he wrote it the Christmas before for his own family. In each of them the story is the worship. The angels’ news is read and sung again, and we answer it the way the shepherds did, by coming to see.

Church	Christmas worship	Read or sung	Before Christmas
Catholic	The Vigil Mass on 24 December, then three Masses on the day	The shepherds (Luke 2), in the night and at dawn	Advent, four Sundays
Orthodox	A vigil, then the Divine Liturgy	“God is with us”; the wise men (Matthew 2)	The Nativity Fast, forty days
Protestant	Christmas Eve services: 33,000 in the Evangelical Church in Germany in 2025	Luther’s “Vom Himmel hoch” (1535)	Advent; blue or purple for Lutherans
Anglican	Christmas Day, with its own prayer and readings in the 1662 Prayer Book	John 1:1–14; nine lessons and carols	Advent, four Sundays

For Catholics the feast unfolds through the night. The Vigil Mass opens it on the evening of 24 December, and then come the three Masses of Christmas Day itself, during the night, at dawn and during the day, four Masses in all. The Gospel moves with the hours. In the dark we hear the angels praising God before the shepherds; as the sun comes up we follow the shepherds to the manger; and by full day we hear the first lines of John’s Gospel. The psalm at the Mass during the day calls the whole world to join in: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise” (Psalm 98:4). Isaac Watts turned that psalm into “Joy to the World” in 1719, and the Methodist Church’s notes on the hymn say it is “often sung as a Christmas Day hymn of celebration.” The whole Catholic season, from Advent to the Baptism of the Lord, is set out in Catholic Christmas traditions.

Orthodox Christians begin the feast with a vigil, and its first service, Great Compline, rings with the chant “God is with us” and the words of Isaiah’s prophecy. Those few words hold the whole feast. Isaiah said the child would be called Immanuel, and Matthew, repeating the prophecy, tells us what the name means: “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). On the night of his birth the Church sings his name back to him. The Divine Liturgy of Christmas then reads Matthew’s account of the wise men who came from the east to worship the child.

From the Church of England came a carol service now heard far beyond it. It began in a wooden shed that served Bishop Benson as his cathedral in Truro, where on Christmas Eve 1880 he arranged nine carols and nine short readings from the Bible. His son remembered that a chorister read the first lesson and the bishop the last, with the other officers of the church reading in turn between them. King’s College, Cambridge, took the service up in 1918, other churches soon made it their own, and King’s estimates that millions of people around the world now listen to it. A chorister’s voice, a shed and a few carols, and the story of Bethlehem goes out every year to people who will never see Cambridge.

Most Western churches keep Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, and the Catechism explains why we wait: by sharing in the long wait for the Saviour’s first coming, “the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming.” Advent looks back to Bethlehem and forward to the day he comes again. On an Advent wreath, in church or at home, one more candle is lit each Sunday. Week by week the light grows a little brighter, and so does our longing, because he is coming closer.

Some families keep a calendar beside the wreath so that the days between the Sundays have their own small moment. We made one with a painting, a verse, two sentences of the story and a short prayer for each day from 1 December to Christmas. We print each one to order and can send it to the United States and Canada.

Advent in Paintings, our wall calendar

Orthodox Christians prepare with a fast of forty days, the Nativity Fast, which the Orthodox Church in America says is “also known as ‘Advent’”; for most Orthodox Christians, who keep the old calendar, it begins on 15 November by the Church’s reckoning, our 28 November, just as their 25 December falls on our 7 January. East and West come to the manger the same way, by waiting for it.

Many families begin with the nativity scene: Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and an empty manger. The figure of the child goes into it at Christmas, and the wise men arrive near the Epiphany on 6 January. Pope Francis called the nativity scene “like a living Gospel rising up from the pages of sacred Scripture.” He encouraged the family custom of preparing it at home, and also of setting it up “in the workplace, in schools, hospitals, prisons and town squares.” The custom goes back to Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1223 he asked a man of Greccio, in Italy, named John to help him, and on Christmas night he found a manger full of hay waiting.

Then come the tree, the meal and the presents. We give at Christmas because God gave first: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Jesus has a word for the meal as well: “when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind” (Luke 14:13). A Christmas table with one guest who could never invite us back is a table set the way he asked.

December is crowded with shops and journeys and bills, with families who find it hard to be in one room, and for some of us with an empty chair at the table this year. Luke gives the shepherds nothing to bring and nothing to buy. They came as they were. Christmas does not have to be earned or paid for.

Begin with the story itself. Read Luke 2 aloud at home, and Matthew 2 a few days later, before the presents are opened or after the meal. Sing the carols that tell it. Paul asks us to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” and to sing “with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Colossians 3:16), and a carol is the word of Christ that a child can remember. Children can place the figures in the nativity scene and tell the story back in their own words. And come to church at Christmas, even if it is the only time this year. The story is still read aloud there, and we come, as the shepherds came, to see him.

Jesus counts a kindness to the least of his brethren as done to him: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). A gift to a food bank, a visit to someone in hospital or in a care home, or a card for a neighbour who lives alone is a Christmas gift to him, and nothing comes back for it. He put reconciliation even before worship, “first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matthew 5:24), so a short call or a letter to someone we have fallen out with can come before the carols.

Christmas Day opens the twelve days that lead to the Epiphany on 6 January, and the Catholic Christmas season continues to the Baptism of the Lord, so the carols and the nativity scene need not come down on 26 December. Keeping Christmas all year begins with keeping it as long as the Church does.

Luke’s story goes on past Christmas night as well. Forty days after a son was born, the law of Moses brought his mother to the Temple (Leviticus 12:2–6; Luke 2:22), and there a devout man named Simeon took the child in his arms and blessed God: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:29–30). The widow Anna came in at the same moment, and she “spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). Like the shepherds, she told others.

Churches still sing Simeon’s song as the day ends. The Book of Common Prayer sets it in its Evening Prayer, “daily throughout the year,” and near the close of Orthodox Vespers comes the prayer of Saint Simeon: “For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” So Christmas comes home with us. When we say those words at the end of an ordinary day in March or in August, we stand where Simeon stood, with the child of Christmas still before us.

And we go back to our own fields. The work is the same on the morning after Christmas, and so are the neighbours and the bills. The shepherds went back to theirs praising God, and so can we. “And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them” (Luke 2:20).

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• Christmas Eve: The Holy Night That Begins Christmas
• What Is Midnight Mass?
• When Are the 12 Days of Christmas? December 25 to January 5
• What Do the Advent Colors Mean? Purple, Pink, Blue and White
• What Does the Christmas Tree Symbolize? Its Meaning and Origin
• Why Was Jesus Born in a Manger, and What Is a Manger?

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