Strange Phrasing - "Octave Day of Christmas, of Mary, Mother of God"

[mkasberg]

I originally discovered this on chruch-calendar-api, but it seemed more appropriate to open the issue here since it comes from this library (specifically, config/locales/en.yml).

The phrasing seems a little strange for this solemnity. The API returns something like this:

{
  "date": "2018-01-01",
  ...
  "celebrations": [
    {
      "title": "Octave Day of Christmas, of Mary, Mother of God",
      ...
    }
  ],
  ...
}

I'm not an expert on the church calendar, but I think it's the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The "Octave Day of Christmas" isn't part of the solemnity, is it? As such, I think I'd expect something more like this:

{
  "date": "2018-01-01",
  ...
  "celebrations": [
    {
      "title": "Mary, Mother of God",
      "colour": "white",
      "rank": "solemnity",
      "rank_num": 1.3
    },
    {
      "title": "Octave Day of Christmas",
      "colour": "white",
      "rank": ???,
      "rank_num": ???
    }
  ],
  ...
}

Alternatively, just change the title to something like: "title": "Mary, Mother of God, and the Octave Day of Christmas" or simply "title": "Mary, Mother of God".

I'm really not sure what the best behavior is here, but the existing phrasing seemed a little strange to me and I thought it might be worth thinking about.

Anyway, it's really a pretty small issue one way or another. Thanks for all your work on this library and API.

[mkasberg]

Also, I wouldn't mind fixing this myself and opening a pull request, but I'd need a little direction on which fix seems best. :smile:

[igneus]

Thanks for opening this issue!

The current wording was probably taken from this Wikipedia page, where it is (probably less awkward) "Octave Day of Christmas, Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God".

The title may look strange as it's really result of a merge of two titles. In liturgical books I own (Czech, Latin) the two parts are usually printed with distinctive types ("Octave Day of Christmas" rather as a supertitle or kind of date, "Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God" as the main feast title). In a similar vein it's printed also in the Czech ordo. I have an English ordo of the diocese of East Anglia (UK), where it's just "Solemnity of Mary, The Holy Mother of God" - and nothing more.

For me the real question is "what is the official English title"? I must admit that for languages other than Czech I currently rely solely on various Internet resources, sometimes with questionable results. It would be best to get photos of the calendar as printed at the beginning of a missal or breviary (or in an appendix of the official English translation of the instruction Calendarium Romanum). That's what I would consider the most official wording and what I would thus prefer to follow.

[igneus]

I should add that the split in two celebrations considered above is not an option. The calendar (here, page 23) is clear: it's a single solemnity (with a somewhat doubled name). Also the calendar system doesn't allow coincidence of a solemnity with another celebration on a single day. In such case order of precedence applies and one of the coinciding celebrations is either transferred (only if both celebrations are solemnities) or suppressed.

[mkasberg]

That all makes sense. I'll see if I can figure out what the name is in some of those official English books.

[mkasberg]

Here is how it appears in Shorter Christian Prayer:

[igneus]

Thanks a lot! Now how would you arrange the title in a single string value without any formatting?

PR most welcome (commits in project history are the best way of keeping record of due credits).

[mkasberg]

I think perhaps "Mary, Mother of God (Octave of Christmas)" makes the most sense. I can get a PR up later today.