The Nativity Fast

Forty days before the Nativity, from 15 November to the eve of 25 December, and the mirror of Great Lent as the Nativity is the mirror of Pascha. It is kept less strictly: fish is allowed on most days until the feast of St Spyridon, and the rule tightens through the last week. The Sundays before Christmas bring the genealogy forward, with the Forefathers and then the Fathers, so that the fast ends with the whole ancestry of Christ read out. In the Slavic churches it is called the Philip fast, because it begins the day after the apostle’s feast.