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Summary
- Christmas Eve is 24 December, and it is the night Christmas begins: the Church counts a great feast from the evening before, so the feast opens at nightfall with a vigil.
- Eve is an old English word for evening, a short form of “even”, so Christmas Eve simply means Christmas evening.
- Counting the day from evening comes from Scripture itself: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5).
- Catholics celebrate a Vigil Mass on the evening of 24 December and a Mass in the night, Orthodox churches pray the Royal Hours, Vespers and the Liturgy of St Basil, and many churches keep the Nine Lessons and Carols that King’s College, Cambridge, first held on Christmas Eve 1918.
- Churches on the Julian calendar keep 25 December on 7 January of the civil calendar, so their Christmas Eve is the evening of 6 January.
- The night’s meaning is the light coming into the dark: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5).
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture is quoted from the King James Version: Genesis 1:5; Leviticus 23:32; Psalm 130:6; Isaiah 9:2; Matthew 1:1, 1:17 and 2:13; Luke 2:7, 2:8–9 and 2:11; John 1:5; Titus 2:11. King James Version, BibleGateway. The Latin of Luke 2:8 is from the Biblia Sacra Vulgata, BibleGateway.
- “eve” and “even”, Dictionary.com (based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary), and “eve”, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.
- Congregation of Rites, Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar (1969), nos. 3, 11, 12, 32–34, with the official replies published in Notitiae, Catholic Culture edition.
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Nativity of the Lord, Vigil Mass, Lectionary 13.
- Felix Just, S.J., The Catholic Lectionary for Mass (1998 USA Edition): Christmas, catholic-resources.org.
- Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), Answering the “Why” of Christmas, 20 November 2023.
- Orthodox Church in America, Eve of the Nativity of our Lord.
- Fr. Lawrence Farley, A Papal Calendar?, Orthodox Church in America, 3 January 2017.
- King’s College, Cambridge, A History of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
- Furius Dionysius Filocalus, Chronography of 354, Part 12: Depositio Martyrum, Latin text from MGH Chronica Minora I (1892), ed. Roger Pearse.
- “Mehr als fünf Millionen Menschen in Weihnachtsgottesdiensten”, evangelisch.de (epd), 28 December 2025.
- “Heiligabend”, Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache.
- SalzburgerLand Tourismus, Silent Night.
- “Christmas Eve”, Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) Folk Culture.
- Julieta Villar, Tradiciones católicas de Adviento y Navidad en Latinoamérica, ACI Prensa, 15 December 2023.
- “vigilia”, Vocabolario Treccani.
- Chris Lau and Lisako Neriki Ancheta, Why couples in Japan treat Christmas like a second Valentine’s Day, CNN, 23 December 2024.
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