“It is for this reason that, in the happy concurrence of the Octave of Christmas and the first day of the year, we have instituted the World Day of Peace.”
The solemnity of Mary as the Mother of God concludes the octave of Christmas, or the eight days following Christ’s birth. While her title as “Mother of God” dates back to the third or fourth century, the Greek term “Theotokos” (“The God-bearer”) first became Catholic doctrine at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
This year, the solemnity falls on a Monday and is not a holy day of obligation in the U.S. The solemnity is abrogated whenever the feast falls on a Sunday or Monday.
At the same time, the Catholic Church also recognizes Jan. 1 as the World Day of Peace, a tradition first celebrated by St. Paul VI in 1968.
“We address ourself to all men of goodwill to exhort them to celebrate ‘The Day of Peace,’ throughout the world, on the first day of the year, Jan. 1, 1968,” he declared at the time. “It is our desire that then, every year, this commemoration be repeated as a hope and as a promise, at the beginning of the calendar which measures and outlines the path of human life in time, that peace with its just and beneficent equilibrium may dominate the development of events to come.”
This day, he stressed, not only belongs to Catholics but also to all people of peace.