contributing to the choice of date, and by the late 4th century it was being adopted in the
East as well. The corresponding eastern feast, January 6, came to be reinterpreted in a
variety of ways—as the feast of Jesus’s baptism (at Constantinople) or of his first miracle
at Cana (in Egypt)—but in the West it was linked to the visit of the Magi to the infant
Jesus. The originally brief period of preparation focused on the Annunciation (Luke
1:26–38), but by the 6th century the celebration of this event had been moved to March
25 (the presumed date of Jesus’s conception, nine months before Christmas). In the West,
this permitted the development of a more extended preparatory period, Advent, lasting
five or even six weeks in a kind of second Lent. With the romanization of the liturgy in
the Carolingian period, however, the number of weeks was stabilized at four.
By ancient custom, the days after Christmas were used to celebrate the feasts of
important saints whose dates of death were unknown: the first martyrs St. Stephen
(December 26) and the Holy Innocents (December 28), and St. John the Beloved Disciple
(December 27). Two other feasts commemorated saints known to have died during this
period, Pope Sylvester I (December 31), and later St. Thomas Becket (December 29).
The eighth day, January 1, was celebrated as the Octave of Christmas, with something of
a Marian emphasis, in Rome; but in the Gallican rite, as in the East, it was the feast of the
Circumcision and naming of Jesus on the eighth day after his birth (Luke 2:21). In this
case, it was the Gallican theme of Circumcision and naming that predominated in the
medieval period. By the high Middle Ages, the Christmas Octave had become a period of
much revelry among the younger clergy. Ritualized role-reversals were popular, with
each rank taking over the liturgy for one day. Thus the feast of St. Stephen, a deacon,
belonged to the deacons, and the feast of St. John to the priests. On Holy Innocents’ day,
the acolytes elected one of their own as Boy Bishop (Episcopellus), who even had the
right to mint special coins for the occasion. The nadir of this period was the Feast of
Fools or Feast of the Ass (variously celebrated on January 1, 6, or 13), which belonged to
the subdeacons. The solemn procession featuring a donkey was among the less offensive
customs of this day, which extended even to drunkenness, the singing of lewd songs,
cross-dressing, and the theft of eucharistic vessels. The more responsible members of the
clergy, constantly looking for ways to rein in such juvenile antics, found an effective tool
in liturgical dramas that reenacted stories from the Bible.
The Nativity cycle ended on February 2, the fortieth day after December 25, which
commemorated both the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple and the
Purification of the Virgin Mary after childbirth, events that are recorded together in Luke
2:22–38. The custom of distributing blessed candles for the procession on this day led to
the popular name Candlemas or Chandeleur.
(3) The remainder of the temporal cycle
a. “Ordinary time.” Early on, a variety of systems were used to designate the Sundays
throughout the year (nowadays often called “Ordinary time”), those that fell outside the
periods of Advent through Epiphany or Septuagesima through Pentecost. The simplest
one prevailed, in which the Sundays were numbered after Epiphany (between two and
six, depending on the date of Septuagesima) and after Pentecost (between 24 and 28,
depending on the dates of Pentecost and the First Sunday of Advent). In some places, the
second period was counted as Sundays after Trinity rather than after Pentecost. The
liturgical texts for the last Sunday after Pentecost or Trinity emphasized eschatological
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