Christmas mass
The Christmas Mass is in origin the in the Holy Night sung Divine Office ( Matins and Lauds ) the church for Christmas. Today it usually means Holy Mass , which is celebrated at Christmas on the night of December 24th to 25th. The term is sometimes also used in Protestant communities for the celebration of Christmas Eve.
The Christmas mass, with the celebration of Easter Vigil, is one of the two big nocturnal celebrations in the church year . It traditionally starts at midnight, but in many parishes it starts at 10 or 11 p.m. Until the 17th and 18th centuries, Mette usually took place on Christmas morning. This custom can still be found today in a few Protestant communities, but especially in the Ore Mountains. In this context, the Mette is called "Uchte". In some places the cantor , the Hebdomadar or the priest sings the solemn announcement of the birth of the Lord according to the Roman martyrology , which originally belonged to the prim , immediately before Christmas mass - another sign of the character of the Christmas mass as a night service with mass and elements from the Liturgy of the Hours.
In many families, attending a church service on Christmas Eve is part of the usual ritual, regardless of regular parish ties. The services on Christmas Eve are therefore the best attended throughout the year in all Christian denominations. In many congregations, Christmas services, nativity plays or “children's christmets” take place in the late afternoon or early on Christmas Eve . These are not Christmas masses , but Christmas vespers or - if they are celebrations of the Eucharist - evening masses .
In some communities it is customary to place the figure of the baby Jesus - popularly called " Christ Child " - in the nativity scene when moving in . The Christmas mass is the first of the three masses of Christmas, followed by the shepherds' mass and the day mass.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christmas mass ( Memento from December 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 2, 2014
- ↑ Christmas mass in the Erzgebirge ( Memento from July 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 2, 2014