Christmas Day Liturgy: Returning to Basics

If you’ve been preparing liturgy or music for a while, the details of the Christmas Day liturgies and the Christmas season may seem pretty familiar or even rote. If you feel this way, reviewing the basics of this season can help you renew your wonder and ensure that you’re on the right track with your preparations. Here are some key points.

On Christmas Day and throughout the season, the Gloria should be sung and not recited. Use familiar Christmas music and Mass settings throughout to unify the entire season.

The normal liturgical color for Christmas is white, but the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 346, allows other colors, especially gold or silver, on more solemn or festive days. These colors can help connect the seasons of Christmas and Easter, the two most important times of the liturgical year. (Remember that Christmas is a season that stretches to the end of the Baptism of the Lord, January 12, 2020.)

Pay more attention to the “Word made flesh” in how you reverence the Book of the Gospels and treat other books containing the Scriptures.

from Living Liturgy: Spirituality, Celebration, and Catechesis for Sundays and Solemnities, 2020, Liturgical Press, Copyright © 2019, Order of Saint Benedict. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

See also these related articles:

1. Christmas Day Liturgy: Returning to Basics
2. Living the Paschal Mystery: A Christmas Day Reflection
3. Peace in the midst of turmoil
4. Responding to the Christmas message
5. Keep your eyes on Christ: An Epiphany reflection
6. What Lies Beneath: Finding Easter in Christmas
7. A prayer when you have nothing left to give and a blessing when you’re exhausted
8. Christmas: The Vigil Mass – Living Liturgy: Traditions and Genealogies
9. Be extra kind to your music director and liturgist this Christmas: An open letter
10. Advent 04B – Living Liturgy: The gradual nature of seasons

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