Introduction

On the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, a natural continuation of the Christmas season. (The liturgical Christmas season lasts for twelve days, until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6). This means that this feast falls on the Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s Day; if both of those fall on Sundays, the Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated on December 30.

The aspect of the overall Christmas celebration celebrated today is the inspiration Jesus gives to the family, the basic unit of society all over the world.

Some spiritual writers have called the thirty years that Jesus spent in Nazareth the “hidden years,” because there is so little written about them in the gospel narratives. However, the little we do know reveals the holiness of ordinary life and shows us how it becomes extraordinary for those baptized into Christ.

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