This is part eight of the “Twelve Posts of Christmas,” a series exploring twelve traditions of the Christmas season.
Happy New Year, dear reader! I am here with your daily reminder that — even though it’s 2024 — it’s still Christmas. If you have followed along with this series, you will recall that Christmastide runs through the eve of January 5.
The first of January marks the “Octave of the Nativity” — episcop-ese for the eighth day of Christmas. Around 1970, Pope St. Paul VI chose this day to institute the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.
The feast is rooted in the Council of Ephesus, which took place in 431 AD. At the council, Mary was formally given the title, Theotokos (Mother of God). As with most theological disagreements within the Early Church, the designation quelled once and for all disagreements over Christ’s mutual divinity and humanity. The Council Fathers declared that Christ’s divine nature and human nature coexist inseparably in one person. Therefore, Mary, as Mother of Jesus, is also Mother of God. (To the Protestants who are tingling with repulsion at all this Mariology: Luther and Calvin and friends also accepted this theological decree.)
With the great title “Mother of God,” the fifth-century Church placed Mary (a woman!) at the forefront of the Christian faith. The story of Christ’s Incarnation cannot be told without the story of Mary, a young Jewish woman from a small town.
The 1,500 years which spanned between the Council of Ephesus and Pope St. Paul VI’s formalizing the Solemnity did not exclude celebrations of Mary. According to an article written by Fr. Dwight Longenecker:
In the church calendar, January first was celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ because according to Luke 2:21 it was on the eighth day after his birth that he was circumcised. This feast is sometimes also called the Feast of the Naming of Jesus or the Holy Name of Jesus.
However, the earliest traditions of the Roman church are that the first of January was celebrated as a Feast of Mary, Mother of God. Around the seventh century the ancient tradition faded out and January first became the day that Jesus’s naming and circumcision was commemorated…
The 1969 revision of the liturgical calendar gathered up this tradition and moved it from October to January. Thus January first was established as “the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, and also the commemoration of the conferral of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.”
In his 1974 Apostolic Letter, Marialis Cultus, Paul VI explained: “This celebration, assigned to Jan. 1 in conformity with the ancient liturgy of the city of Rome, is meant to commemorate the part played by Mary in this mystery of salvation. It is meant also to exalt the singular dignity which this mystery brings to the holy Mother…through whom we were found worthy to receive the Author of life.”
And so, in the 1970s, in the midst of the Sexual Revolution, the Church decided to mark the beginning of each year with the solemnity of “WOMAN, GOD-BEARER.” While I am certainly grateful to live in a world where the education of women is unquestioned and pants are a viable wardrobe option, it is pretty great to know that an ancient declaration on the dignity of womanhood kicks off the new year.