What you'll notice
For most of the season, the Orthodox are the people at the work potluck eating the shrimp and skipping the honey-baked ham.1
And on the Sunday before Christmas, someone stands up and reads the longest list of names in the Gospels: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1), and then the begats. Forty-two generations of them, by Matthew's own count: "fourteen generations" from Abraham to David, fourteen more to Babylon, fourteen more "until the Christ" (Matthew 1:17). Whoever's reading it has been practicing names like Hezron and Amminadab all week. It's the end credits of a Marvel movie, except you're not allowed to leave early, and the post-credits scene is the Incarnation.1
What it's called
The Nativity Fast runs forty days, November 15 to December 24. Isabel Hapgood's old service book calls it "The Christmas Fast," the Orthodox counterpart to Advent.2 The Orthodox Church in America's fasting outline still lists it as "St. Philip's Fast," because it starts the morning after the feast of the Apostle Philip on November 14.1 Fasting lays out the whole calendar and the range of how people keep it.
The Church reads John 1 on Philip's feast. Philip finds his friend Nathanael under a fig tree: "We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nathanael isn't impressed: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:45-46). It's the first-century version of a one-star Yelp review, aimed at a whole town. Philip doesn't argue. He says three words: "Come and see." Philip had exactly one strategy, and it's the strategy of the whole season.1
What's actually happening
What's on the table
It's gentler than Great Lent. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese puts it plainly: "Until the last two weeks before Christmas, fish, wine, and oil are on the menu for weekends and weekdays—except Wednesdays and Fridays." Then, "With two weeks until Christmas, the fast intensifies, and fish is off the menu."3 Father Peter Chamberas, writing for the Archdiocese, marks the turn at December 12, the feast of Saint Spyridon.4 The Archdiocese also says, "Check with your parish priest or spiritual father about how to keep the fast according to your spiritual state and physical wellbeing."3
Father Chamberas adds: "The time before Christmas, as with the time before Pascha, is a sober time of serious preparation, a time of prayer, fasting and charity, and not a time for parties and entertainment."4 (Don't panic. The party is coming. The guest of honor just hasn't arrived yet.)1
The dinner nobody came to
On the Sunday of the Forefathers, two Sundays before Christmas, the Church reads a parable about a party: "A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, 'Come, for all things are now ready'" (Luke 14:16-17). The invited guests bail. One bought a field. One bought "five yoke of oxen." One says, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come" (Luke 14:18-20). It's every RSVP you've ever gotten in December, except with livestock. So the master says, "Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind" (Luke 14:21).1
The names nobody would've picked
On the Sunday before Christmas, the Gospel is that genealogy, Matthew 1:1-25. Matthew's list is fathers and sons, but before he gets to Mary he stops four times to name a mother. "Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar." "Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth." "David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah" (Matthew 1:3, 5-6). Tamar, whose story in Genesis 38 you don't read at Sunday school. Rahab, a harlot of Jericho. Ruth, a Moabite, a foreigner. And Bathsheba, whom Matthew calls only the wife of Uriah.1
Saint John Chrysostom stops at Tamar and asks the question for us: "What are you doing, O man, putting us in remembrance of a history that contains an unlawful intercourse?" Then he answers it:
Yea, it was for this cause He came, not to escape our disgraces, but to bear them away.5
And on Ruth and Rahab, "the one an alien, the other an harlot": "He has come as a Physician, not as a Judge."5
Why it matters
Father Georges Florovsky took the genealogy's first line and hung the whole Old Testament on it:
Ultimately, the Old Testament as a whole has to be considered as "a book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham" (Matt. 1.1). It was the period of promises and expectation, the time of covenants and prophecies.6
"'Fulfilment' is the basic category of revelation," he says.6 That's what Philip was trying to tell Nathanael under the fig tree.1
So the Gospel that closes the fast reads less like a pedigree and more like a guest list. God put the outsiders and the scandals right there in His own family line, in ink, for everybody to read out loud on the Sunday before Christmas. The great supper fills up anyway, with Tamars and Rahabs and Ruths.1 And the Epistle that same Sunday, after its roll call of the faithful from Hebrews 11, ends: "And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us" (Hebrews 11:39-40). Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets have been waiting at the table for us to show up.1
What you do
If you're Orthodox: keep the fast as your priest blesses. Eat simpler, and give the difference to somebody who doesn't get a great supper this year. (Fish stays on the menu, except Wednesdays and Fridays, until December 12, and the shrimp can stay all the way to Christmas. Nobody said this was hard mode.) Read Matthew 1 at home before you hear it at church, and say the hard names out loud.1
If you're the one doing the inviting: if there's someone in your life who thinks nothing good could come out of your parish, this is the season to say "come and see." Bring them to Vespers, or to the Sunday of the Forefathers to hear about the oxen, or to the Sunday before Christmas to hear their own kind of people named in Christ's family tree.1 If they're nervous about a first visit, Your First Visit was written for exactly that friend.
And remember how the story under the fig tree ends. Nathanael comes, still skeptical, and asks Jesus, "How do You know me?" Jesus tells him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nathanael's review flips on the spot: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (John 1:48-49). He'd been seen the whole time. He just needed a friend to say come.1
Notes
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Adapted from a Simply Orthodox article by Jamey Bennett, "Come and See: Forty Days to Bethlehem" (not yet published). Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV), as in the article. Calendar and readings from the Orthodox Church in America's fasting outline and daily readings for November 14 and December 12 and 19, 2027, as given in the article. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩
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Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church (1906), p. xvii, as quoted in "Come and See." ↩
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Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Department of Religious Education, "Nativity Fast," as quoted in "Come and See." ↩↩
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Rev. Peter A. Chamberas, "Not by Bread Alone" (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 2015), as quoted in "Come and See." ↩↩
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Saint John Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Matthew, trans. Prevost, rev. Riddle, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 10, as quoted in "Come and See." ↩↩
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Georges Florovsky, Collected Works, vol. I, Bible, Church, Tradition, "Revelation and Interpretation," p. 23, as quoted in "Come and See." ↩↩