Christmas Day celebrates the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God made flesh for our salvation. The feast falls on the twenty-fifth of December and is observed with the full solemnity due to the mystery of the Incarnation. White is the liturgical colour, signifying the purity of Christ's humanity and the joy of God's gift to the world. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer appoints the Christmas Collect throughout the Octave — a prayer that we who receive God's only-begotten Son may be regenerate, made God's children by adoption and grace, and daily renewed by the Holy Spirit.

The appointed Epistle from the Letter to the Hebrews sets the Incarnation within the full sweep of God's speech to mankind. God, who spoke at sundry times and in diverse manners through the prophets, has in these last days spoken definitively by his Son: the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person, and the one who by himself purged our sins before sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Christmas is the feast of that final and authoritative Word.

The appointed Gospel from the opening verses of Saint John's Gospel reaches behind the manger to the eternal pre-existence of the Word: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. No other feast in the year carries the Church so deeply into the mystery of who God is, or so clearly discloses what his love has accomplished for the world he has made.