Christmas Day
The Second Christmas Day on December 26 in most European countries, a public holiday between the years .
distribution
The Christmas was in the liturgy as the 8th century one octave , a week-long hard time, but in matters within this time existing saints' days remained. Before the Reformation , there were up to five Christmas holidays in the individual German rulers, depending on the respective sovereign .
December 26th is a public holiday in the following European countries: Bulgaria , Denmark , Germany , Estonia , Finland , Greece , Ireland , Iceland , Italy , Croatia , Latvia , Liechtenstein , Lithuania , Luxembourg , Netherlands , Norway , Austria , Poland , Romania , Sweden , Slovakia , the Czech Republic , Hungary , the United Kingdom and Cyprus . In Spain it is only a public holiday in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands , in France only in the regions that belonged to Germany between 1871 and 1918 , today's departments of Bas-Rhin , Haut-Rhin and Moselle . December 26th is also regarded as a public holiday in the German-speaking community of Belgium and in parts of Switzerland , but there are no nationwide regulations. In the other European countries it is not a public holiday.
liturgy
In the Protestant churches no longer standing on Boxing Day (Christian Party II) birth story of Jesus in the center, but the incarnation ( incarnation ) of the word to John . As gospel be Joh 1.1-5 (6-8) 9-14 LUT , as Epistel Hebrew 1.1-3 (4-6) LUT and from the old Testament Isa 11,1-9 LUT read. This practice, with the emphasis on the second holiday, has superseded St. Stephen's Day.
In the liturgy of the Roman Catholic , Old Catholic , Anglican and Independent Evangelical Lutheran Churches , the incarnation is celebrated on Christmas Day, where the Gospel of the Incarnation of the Divine Word is read out during Holy Mass “On the day”. December 26th, on the other hand, is celebrated as the feast day of St. Stephen - as it was before the Christmas octave was introduced in the 8th century - and is part of the feast octave with the commemoration of the comites Christi (companions of the Christ child ).
Other names of the day
In the UK and several countries of the Commonwealth called the Boxing Day Boxing Day .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Philipp Harnoncourt: Christmas Octave . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3rd Edition. tape 10 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001.
- ↑ Max Adler: Christmas Day in Spain - A completely normal working day? Strandgazette, December 26, 2014.
- ↑ United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany and Evangelical Church of the Union (ed.): Evangelisches Gottesdienstbuch, Agende for the Evangelical Church of the Union and for the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany , 5th edition, Berlin: Verlagsgemeinschaft Evangelisches Gottesdienstbuch 2012, ISBN 978-3-7859-0933-1 .
- ↑ a b Bieritz, Karl-Heinrich: The church year: festivals, commemorative and public holidays in the past and present , 2nd edition, Berlin: Union-Verlag 1988, ISBN 978-3-372-00012-0 , p. 175.