Sixth Day of Christmas: The Collect and Quote for the Week

Our hearth during Christmastide

Beyond the old familiar song, most evangelicals are not aware of the practice of celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas. I wished Pastor Joe a Happy 6th Day of Christmas, and he looked at me as if I was speaking in Swahili.

But our family has been following the practice of celebrating Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphany for about twelve years, several years before I started attending the Anglican Church and worshiping from the Book of Common Prayer. For a few years, we only did stockings on Christmas and gave the kids their big presents on Epiphany after celebrating the Twelfth Night of Christmas the night before.

This year we are glad that the Anglicans are hosting a Twelfth Night party at Victoria House; they haven't done so for a few years, and I'm really looking forward to Alice's Christmastide trifle and sweet sherry in the Ackers' antique sherry glasses. With Epiphany landing on a Sunday this year, I'm hoping to attend Sunday services with the Anglicans since I totally missed Advent this year.

Here are today's prayer and readings from the Book of Common Prayer 2011:

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS DAY 

THE COLLECT:
ALMIGHTY God, you wonderfully created humanity in your image, and more wonderfully restored mankind; Grant that as your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, was made in human likeness and lived in an earthly home, so may we be partakers of the divine nature and live as a holy family; Through Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and rules with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. (References: Psalm 139.14; Hebrews 3.14; Romans 8.14-16)

THE READINGS:Isaiah 61.1-3; Matthew 2.19-23; Psalm 8; Psalm 145.18-22; Ephesians 1.3-14

The quotation I've chosen from my Quotation Journal (started almost twelve years ago) is from one of the Early Church Fathers about the Incarnation:

Jesus was "unashamed of the lowliness of our nature. For it was to him no lowering to put on what he himself had made. Let that handiwork be forever glorified, which became the cloak of its creator."

~Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347-407)

So I wish you a joyous and blessed Sixth Day of Christmastide as we continue to celebrate Jesus' First Coming as a child in Bethlehem two thousand years ago and as we continue to anticipate His return "to judge the living and the dead."

With Christmastide Joy,