Talk:Christmastide

message: * Other way around: This should be merged into The Twelve Days of Christmas, by far the more commonly used phrase. --207.237.223.118 (talk) 14:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What exactly are these two different concepts? Both refer to a space of time--and the same space of time, about the same holiday.  Certainly a merged article needs to address both terms, but the basic idea is the same.Tb (talk)
* Agree.  The "twelve days of Christmas", is not the "more commonly used phrase", but moreover, makes it hard to talk about the forty-day Christmatide tradition as well. A merged article needs to discuss both the twelve-day and forty-day traditions. Tb (talk) 00:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: Merge

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Christmastide's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "Forbes2008":
From Christmas: 
From A Christmas Carol: 
Reference named "Bunson":
From Nativity scene: Bunson, Matthew E.. Catholic Almanac 2009. Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2008. .
From Christmas: 
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 17:20, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Christmastide]] 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: If, as our lede indicates, Christmastide is the same as the Christmas season is the same as Christmas time, then the article is not inclusive enough.  The Christmas season begins in America some-time around the Friday after the fourth Thursday  in November (for commercially-minded people) and perhaps with the start of advents (for others).  Merriam-Webster online defines Christmastime (note the spelling and also that it is not red-lined here).Kdammers (talk) 14:38, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christmas season 

message: "In the English city of Oxford, many Christian families, after attending church, celebrate this period through serving a traditional dish called Boar’s head." Utter nonsense. A quick glance at the quoted reference will reveal that this was not describing what individual families do, but a custom at one of the colleges of the University. Clearly individual families would not be cooking boar's heads, the customs of families in Oxford are unlikely to differ from those in the rest of England, and in any case a book published in 1885 is unlikely to be reliable as a description of present-day customs. --rossb (talk) 09:21, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boar's head nonsense 

message: Upon reading this article, I was surprised to see the Puritans mentioned in the section about antireligious governments. The Wikipedia article on Puritans would lead the casual reader to the conclusion that they were extremely religious since religion is discussed repeatedly in the opening paragraphs. I would also argue that, in the strictest sense, the Nazi party in Germany was not antireligious - while dissenting voices were shut down, this did not apply to religion as a whole. For this reason, I would like to propose removing "antireligious" from the section heading. I do not feel as though it adds anything and do not foresee any negative impact to the article if it were altered. I realise other Wikipedians may have divergent views so I would rather not act unilaterally. Paddyman1989 (talk) 21:24, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Query on Suppression section heading 

message: There probably should be some reference to the 40 days long Christmastide practiced by Catholics prior to the liturgical reform of Paul VI. 147.178.4.137 (talk) 20:37, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've heard from an FSSP priest that Christmas was never actually 40 days long, even before the reform, and that this is only a widespread rumor.  I am not a historian or liturgist though, so I have no idea. 2601:49:8400:26B:10E2:D539:1E94:B623 (talk) 14:57, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  40 Days of Christmas 

message: The article says that Christmas begins at vespers on December 24th.  This is probably correct, but I think it needs more nuance.  I won't be the one to make the edit, but I'll just lay out my thoughts below if anyone wants any ideas.
At least with regard to the Catholic Church, there are two different systems of counting time, which are each used for different purposes.  The one system counts time from sunset to sunset (this is the one that's used in the Divine Office), and the other counts from midnight to midnight (this I believe is the one used for the Church's fasting/abstinence requirements.  And I believe it's also the one used for the Sunday obligation, although the Church does allow Sunday Mass to be "anticipated" on Saturday evening).
So on the one system, Christmas begins with vespers on the 24th; but, on the other system, Christmas begins on the 25th at midnight.
During the liturgical reforms following Vatican II, I think the Divine Office may have switched over to the midnight-to-midnight cycle, in which case the vespers-to-vespers system might not exist anymore.  (I'm really not sure.)
In either case, the "feasting" and celebratory nature of Christmas didn't begin until December 25th.  This is because Christmas Eve used to be a mandatory day of fasting, and the fast would not end until the reception of Holy Communion at Mass.  Even if December 24th vespers is considered "Christmas", the first Mass was never celebrated before midnight (this is on account of the tradition which says that Christ was born at night time).
The fasting is no longer mandatory (apart from the 1-hour communion fast which is something different), and I think Christmas Mass is allowed to be "anticipated" (before midnight), but, generally speaking, I think it's basically the same as it used to be: anything prior to midnight is anticipatory (looking forward to Christ's birth), and everything after midnight is celebratory (celebrating the birth of Christ). 2601:49:8400:26B:10E2:D539:1E94:B623 (talk) 15:30, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  December 24th