As we reach the halfway point in the 12 Days of Christmas, we’ve commemorated the Nativity, St. Stephen the first martyr, St. John the beloved disciple, the Holy Innocents, and then skipped forward a thousand years to remember St. Thomas Becket, the most famous martyr of the medieval era.

December 30th, the Sixth Day of Christmas, is where things get tricky. Officially, no saint is associated with it – although some use it to commemorate St. Egwin of Evesham, who founded England’s now-ruined Evesham Abbey in the eighth century.

Instead, the day is kept for the Feast of the Holy Family. This is usually celebrated on the first Sunday between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, with December 30th being used if there is no Sunday during this period.

This year, the first Sunday after Christmas Day is tomorrow, New Year’s Eve – but, so we have something interesting to discuss, we will be discussing the Feast of the Holy Family today, and the Silvester traditions normally associated with New Year’s Eve tomorrow.

Several churches appear to be following suit this year, advertising their Holy Family services for Saturday rather than Sunday, likely to spare their parishioners the confusion that comes with religious holidays that like to move around the calendar.

JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH.  

The Feast of the Holy Family, on which we honor the Lord’s earthly family, brings us back to the Nativity story commemorated on the First Day of Christmas. His mother, the Virgin Mary, and His foster father, St. Joseph, had much to do soon after He was laid in his manger and visited by the Magi, or wise men.

The angel of the Lord warned St. Joseph: “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him,” thus escaping the slaughter of Bethlehem’s children, which we remembered on Childermas.

We know little of Jesus’s time in Egypt, and later Nazareth when it was safe for the Holy Family to return to Galilee. The Church refers to this as the “Hidden Life of Jesus” – and it comprises most of His life, with few stories coming down to us between His very first days and His public ministry decades later.

What we do know, according to Christian teachings, is that Jesus was not just God, but fully a man. This is one of the most remarkable and perhaps confusing miracles of the incarnation. Per the Gospel of Luke, He “was subject unto” his earthly parents.

The Feast of the Holy Family, therefore, is traditionally a time to honor all families, and in particular our own, as images of the Holy Family. It is a day for families to make time for each other, after they have, perhaps, allowed themselves to begin drifting apart as Christmas Day recedes, and the pressures and pleasures of ordinary life crowd in.

It is also traditional to pray that our families receive God’s blessing and protection, as the earthly family of the Son was blessed:

We bless your name, O Lord,
for sending your own incarnate Son,
to become part of a family,
so that, as he lived its life,
he would experience its worries and its joys.

We ask you, Lord,
to protect and watch over this family,
so that in the strength of your grace
its members may enjoy prosperity,
possess the priceless gift of your peace,
and, as the Church alive in the home,
bear witness in this world to your glory.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.