The Liturgical Year

The date is simply not important. Christmas is not really about the celebration of a birth date at all. It is about the celebration of a birth. The fact of the date and the fact of the birth are two different things. The calendrical verification of the feast itself is not really that important.

 

The real answer to the question of the various dates of the liturgical year is that the liturgical year is not, for the most part, about a series of events at all. It is about the import of those defining events. It is about the relationship of those events, one to the other. It is about the real meaning, not the historical dating, of the events which, to this very day, shape our spiritual lives…What is important to the understanding of a life-changing moment is that it happened, not necessarily where or when it happened.

J. Chittister, The Liturgical Year (Thomas Nelson 2009), 50-51.