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Commentary from 
THE ANNOTATED
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
Edited by JOHN HENRY BLUNT
Rivingtons, London, 1884
THE CIRCUMCISION.
 
This day has been observed from the earliest ages of the Church as the Octave of the Nativity, and from about the sixth century as both the octave of the Nativity and the Feast of the Circumcision.  From its coincidence with the Kalends of January, on which the riotous and immoral festival of the Saturnalia was kept by the Romans, it offered a great difficulty to the Church for some centuries, and there were places and periods in which the Saturnalia were so mixed up with the Christian feast that the observance of the latter was altogether forbidden.

Of the Circumcision there is no notice whatever in the Comes of St. Jerome, the day being called Octava Domini , the Epistle being Gal. iii. 23, and the Gospel the same as ours.  In St. Gregory's Sacramentary the name of the day is still the Octave of the Lord, and the Circumcision is not noticed in the Collect; but in the proper Preface are the worlds, "per Christum Dominum nostrum; eujus hodie Circumcisionis diem, et nativitatis octavum celebrantes;" and the words of the Benediction, as printed above, are equally explicit.  In the Salisbury Missal the day is named as it now is in the Prayer Book, but except in the Gospel there is not the slightest allusion to the festival as being connected with the Circumcision.  In modern times the tendency has been to observe the day as New Year's Day, overlooking, as far as possible, its connection with the Nativity, as well as with the Circumcision.

The true idea of the day seems to be that it belongs to Christmas as its Octave; but that as the three days after Christmas are specially honoured by the Commemoration of Saints, so the Octave is supplemented with the Commemoration of our Lord's Circumcision, to do still greater honour to the day of His Nativity.  The two are pleaded conjointly in the Litany, "By Thy holy Nativity and Circumcision."

The Rubric at the end of the Gospel was inserted by Bishop Cosin.  It varies in a very important particular from the previous Rubric of 1552.
1552.    If there be a Sunday between the Epiphany and the Circumcision: then
             shall be used the same Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, at the Communion,
             which we used upon the day of Circumcision.

1662.    The same Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, shall serve for every day after
             unto the Epiphany.
In the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637 the Rubric stood as in that of 1552, with the addition, "So likewise, upon every other day from the time of the Circumcision to the Epiphany."  Either daily celebration of the Holy Communion was not contemplated in 1552, or the omission of any mention of it in this Rubric was an oversight.  In 1637 and 1662 it was clearly provided for.

January 1st was never in any way connected with the opening of the Christian year; and the religious observance of this day has never received any sanction from the Church, except as the Octave of Christmas and the Feast of the Circumcision.  The spiritual 'point' of the season all gathers about Christmas: and as the modern New Year's Day is merely conventionally so (New Year's Day being on March 25th until the middle of the eighteenth century), there is no reason why it should be allowed at all to dim the lustre of a day so important to all persons and all ages as Christmas Day.