The practice of celebrating Mass at midnight on Christmas Eve can be traced back nearly 1,600 years and is one of the Catholic Church’s oldest traditions.
But in the past 50 years, because of changes both in Church law and in society, it’s become common in the Diocese of Columbus and elsewhere to celebrate the “midnight” Mass at an earlier time on Christmas Eve, with vigil Masses in the late afternoon and early evening of Dec. 24 drawing the largest attendance among Christmas Masses.
Priests can celebrate as many as four Christmas Masses – the Vigil Mass, between 4 and 9 p.m. Dec. 24; Mass at Night, between 9 p.m. Dec. 24 and 4 a.m. Dec. 25; Mass at Dawn, between 4 and 10 a.m. Dec. 25; and Mass During the Day, after 10 a.m. Dec. 25.
This year, among the 106 parishes in the Diocese of Columbus, 29 are celebrating the Night Mass at midnight, with three others at 11:30 p.m. Ten of the larger parishes are celebrating simultaneous Vigil Masses in separate locations because of the size of the crowds who come to those Masses each year.
Other parishes are livestreaming Masses to other sites on their campuses and to homes, a practice that was widespread last year when distancing limits remained in effect because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The diocese’s largest church in terms of both seating capacity and number of members, Westerville St. Paul the Apostle, is celebrating Masses simultaneously at 4 p.m. Dec. 24 in the church and at Westerville North High School, as well as having the traditional midnight Mass and Masses at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 24 and 8 and 10 a.m. and noon Dec. 25, all in the church.
“There’s no question that lots of people come to the earlier Masses on Christmas Eve,” said Father Jonathan Wilson, the church’s pastor. “This allows them to spend Christmas morning with their families while still making Mass the first thing they do to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
“But I always intend to have a midnight Mass here at St. Paul’s while I’m pastor. It’s something special, being at an hour when the Church usually isn’t having liturgical celebrations, and there’s a certain peacefulness about it, with everything dark and waiting for the light of Jesus.”
Deacon Dean Racine, parish administrator, said a total of 8,067 people attended seven Masses at St. Paul on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2019, including 3,723 at the two 4 p.m. Masses – 2,078 at the church and 1,645 at Westerville North – compared with 725 at the midnight Mass.
Those numbers were smaller in 2020 because of the pandemic and its restrictions and a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, with a total of 2,254 for 10 Masses. Attendance for the 4 p.m. Masses was 338 in the church and 140 in the St. Paul School gymnasium, and 200 attended the midnight Mass.
Last year, several parishes required anyone wishing to attend a Christmas Mass to make reservations as a result of pandemic-related distancing rules. Reservations are not necessary at most parishes this year, but a few still have some form of distance requirement. Check your parish for details.
One parish that is requiring reservations for all Dec. 24 evening and Dec. 25 Masses is Dublin St. Brigid of Kildare Church. Seating will be at full capacity, with the exception of a reserved section by the baptismal font, with distancing regulations in effect.
The wearing of masks is being strongly recommended at St. Brigid and all diocesan parishes. Masses at the Dublin parish will be at 4, 6:30 and 9 p.m. Christmas Eve and 9 and 11 a.m. Christmas Day and will be livestreamed elsewhere on the parish campus if the church is filled. The 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. Masses also will be available live and on demand on YouTube.
“The shift toward attending earlier Masses has been going on for years but really became apparent about 10 years ago as part of changes in society which have seen Christmas Eve become more prominent for family gatherings,” said Msgr. Joseph Hendricks, pastor at St. Brigid for the past 24 years. “The parish has adapted its schedule in response to those changes.”
The Dublin parish is among many that designate the earliest Mass on Christmas Eve as a children’s Mass, featuring a children’s choir. “This benefits families because children of all ages can come to
Mass on Christmas Eve, then go back home and spend time together,” Msgr. Hendricks said.
“A schedule like this without a midnight Mass also gives the elderly and infirm a better opportunity to attend Mass with less concern about things like travel and weather conditions.”
The Church of the Resurrection in New Albany will have Masses at 4:30 with a children’s choir, 7:30 and 10 p.m. Dec. 24 and 10 a.m. Dec. 25 in the church, plus a 4 p.m. Mass on Dec. 24 in the parish activity center, which was its first church building. That Mass will be for those who prefer social distancing. The Masses in the church will not have distancing restrictions.
“We had a midnight Mass at (Columbus) St. Thomas (the Apostle Church), where I was pastor for several years, but when I came to Resurrection in 2018, there was no midnight Mass, and the parish has kept to that schedule,” said Father Denis Kigozi, pastor.
“The possibility of a midnight Mass was considered here, and we conducted a survey, with the result about 50-50 for and against, so we decided to stick to the schedule we have.
“One thing to consider is that it’s taxing for many members of the adult choir to sing at an evening Mass, then do it again at midnight and in the morning. Not having a midnight Mass is of great benefit to them.
“When the Church in the United States began using the new Roman Missal in 2011, it was interesting to see that for Christmas, it never said anything about a midnight Mass, but instead called it a Mass at Night. That seemed to encourage moving away from the Mass specifically at midnight. Now that I’ve been celebrating the night Mass earlier, I don’t think I’d want to change.”
Even the Vatican has made the shift. What had been a midnight Mass there for centuries was moved to the evening of Dec. 24 in 2009 and will be at 7:30 p.m. Rome time (1:30 p.m. Ohio time) on that date this year. It will be telecast on a delayed basis at 11:30 p.m. by the NBC network, which has been providing this service for decades. The Knights of Columbus cover satellite uplink costs and downlink expenses.
Father Martin Ralko, pastor of Zanesville St. Nicholas Church, sees the shift to earlier Christmas Masses as part of a larger cultural change. “People just don’t seem to want to wait that long for anything, and it’s the same with Christmas,” he said.
“Some stores start displaying Christmas things before Halloween, people seem to be having Christmas parties earlier, and there are few who do as the Catholic Church does and wait till Christmas Eve to get the celebration underway. Some people even take down their tree right after Christmas, and it’s on to the next thing. There’s just a sense of impatience toward waiting.
“One of the best memories of my childhood was growing up in Dearborn, Michigan and looking forward to being an altar server at the midnight Mass. It was a highlight of the liturgical year.
“I had a block-and-a-half walk to and from church in a very Catholic neighborhood. It seemed like there were hundreds of kids there, and we were excited about everything to do with Christmas – the Masses and the songs, plus the gifts, too.” Christmas Mass times at his parish are 6 and 9 p.m. Dec. 24 and 9 a.m. Dec. 25.
The tradition of midnight Mass appears to have started in the fourth century in Jerusalem, where a European Christian woman named Egeria spent three years and said she saw Christians there take part in a midnight vigil every year to honor the birth of Jesus on the Dec. 25 feast day the Church had set for the event.
Pope Sixtus III celebrated what is widely considered to be the first midnight Mass in Rome in the year 430 at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, which at the time held the same pre-eminence in the Church as St. Peter’s Basilica does today.
In the next several centuries, the practice of midnight Mass became more widespread, as all priests were given permission to celebrate three Masses on Christmas Day – a privilege previously reserved for the pope – provided the Masses were at midnight, dawn and during the day (no later than noon).
Widespread celebration of evening Masses – on Christmas or any other day – is a development of fairly recent times. It began with Christus Dominus, an apostolic decree issued by Pope Pius XII in 1953 allowing for evening Masses as a way of making it possible for workers who could not attend weekday morning Mass to attend in the evening instead.
This document did not authorize vigil Masses for either Sundays or holy days of obligation, such as Christmas. That permission came on Jan. 10, 1970 in a document from the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of the Clergy.
Pius XII also is responsible for another change that greatly encouraged reception of the Eucharist at Christmas and throughout the year.
For most of the history of the Church since specific buildings, rather than homes, began to be set aside as a place for worship, people wishing to receive the Eucharist had to fast from midnight until the time of reception. Pius XII changed the rules in 1957 to require only a three-hour fast. Pope Paul VI in 1964 reduced that period to one hour. Those changes made attending and receiving the Eucharist at an evening Mass a much more appealing option.
