Christmastide Spans 40 Days

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Christmas is celebrated by both the secular world and traditional Catholics for about forty days. The difference is that worldly people start celebrating around Thanksgiving, while Catholics observe Advent and, therefore, start celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve.

In the Traditional Latin Mass calendar, Christmas season ends February 2 on what's called Candlemas Day with simultaneous feasts: the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of her divine Child Jesus in the Temple. These feasts are an extension of Christ's Nativity as Luke 2:22–24 records:

And when the days of her purification were fulfilled according to the Law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord" and to offer sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."

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