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: 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 — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the three youths and Daniel.