The Sunday before the Nativity

Feast · sunday

• the Sunday falling between 18 and 24 December — the last before the Nativity (Eastern Orthodox Church)

The last Sunday before Christmas, and the older of the two December Sundays that reach back past the church into Israel. What is read on it is not the same in every book. The Sirmond codex gives it no section of its own: it is mentioned inside the previous Sunday’s notice, where the fathers are named only as “our fathers” and what is kept is the three youths Ananias, Azarias and Misael, with Daniel the prophet. The named patriarchs come from the other recensions. A twelfth-century Calabrian book has Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with David the prophet and no youths; the Grottaferrata book of the same century has the patriarchs, the youths and David; and the Patmos book has the patriarchs, the youths and Daniel. Delehaye also says plainly that the Sunday does not stand in the same place in every synaxarion — in some it follows 16 December, in others the day after, or the 18th, 19th or 20th. The Typikon settles what the synaxaria leave open. Its December chapter tabulates this Sunday against every weekday the Nativity can fall on, putting it between the 18th and the 24th, and its rubric prescribes the Polyeleos at Matins with Great Vespers and the blessing of loaves the evening before.

After The Typikon, ch. 48, the Menaion — the Sunday before the Nativity, at 18 December, «Недѣ́лѧ пред̾ ржⷭ҇тво́мъ хрⷭ҇то́вымъ ст҃ы́хъ ѻ҆тє́цъ», p. 316.