The Sunday of the Forefathers

Feast · sunday

• the Sunday falling between 11 and 17 December — the second Sunday before the Nativity (Eastern Orthodox Church)

The ancestors of Christ, kept two Sundays before the Nativity, and the one day in the Byzantine year that reaches back past the church entirely. The Sirmond codex heads it ΚΥΡΙΑΚΗ πρὸ τῶν ἁγίων πατέρων — the Sunday before the holy fathers — and adds that it is the one called τῶν προπατόρων, of the forefathers; its first notice opens on Abraham out of the book of Genesis. Delehaye’s note on the day says what is actually read in the menaia: a long series of holy fathers from Adam to Joseph the spouse of the Theotokos. The Sunday after it, before the Nativity itself, keeps the fathers proper — the Patmos codex names Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with the three youths and Daniel the prophet, and the Grottaferrata codex gives the same list ending in David. The Typikon fixes both the day and the service: its December chapter says the Sunday of the Forefathers begins on the 11th and runs to the 17th, and its rubric for the day prescribes Great Vespers with the blessing of loaves and the Polyeleos at Matins.

After The Typikon, ch. 48, the Menaion — the Sunday of the Forefathers, at 11 December, «Вѣ́дати подоба́етъ, ꙗ҆́кѡ ѿ сегѡ̀ а҃і-гѡ днѐ начина́етсѧ недѣ́лѧ пра́ѻтеческаѧ, и҆ восхо́дитъ сегѡ́же деке́мврїа до з҃і-гѡ днѐ», p. 304.