This is a question which comes up each year. It came up again today.
Must we do penance on Friday within the Octave of Christmas?
The short answer is YES. This year.
According to Canon Law, Catholics are bound to do penance on Fridays of the year except when the Friday is of the liturgical rank of a “Solemnity” (a new-fangled post-Conciliar rank).
In some years, the Friday will be 1 January. That’s another matter, because 1 January is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God in the new-fangled calendar, and the Solemnity removes the obligation.
This year, however, Friday is theday after Christmas and the Feast of St. Stephen.
The Octave of Christmas does not have the same liturgical “weight” of the Octave of Easter.
It doesn’t matter how neat and crisp and even your snow is…
Easter Friday (a Solemnity) outweighs the penance thing, but Christmas Friday does not.
Note can. 1251 in the 1983 Code.
Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Remember, you can ask your parish priest to dispense you or commute acts of penance.
Can. 1245 Without prejudice to the right of diocesan bishops mentioned in can. 87, for a just cause and according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop, a pastor [parish priest] can grant in individual cases a dispensation from the obligation of observing a feast day or a day of penance or can grant a commutation of the obligation into other pious works. A superior of a religious institute or society of apostolic life, if they are clerical and of pontifical right, can also do this in regard to his own subjects and others living in the house day and night.
Members of religious communities and third orders should consult their own regulations and review to whom they turn for dispensations.
It may be that some local places have exceptions in their calendars. For example, if, this year, you are a parishioner of a parish named in honor of St. John Evangelist, or perhaps the Sts. Theophanes and Theodore, martyrs (Feast 27 Dec.), your patronal feast could be a reason not to be bound by Friday penance.
Also, you can substitute another form of penance for abstaining from meat. Make it penitential, however. Abstinence from meat has good reasoning behind it. For some, however, there abstinence from other things can be of greater spiritual effect.
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There was also a pre-Vatican II indult for England and Wales which allowed eating of meat on the Christmas Octave Friday. It is unclear whether or not this indult is still valid.
In Germany, St. Stephen falling on a Friday is the once-in-seven-years occasion of the new Code being more demanding than the old one. That’s something to celebrate, if you think about it.
Under the CIC of 1917, holy days of obligation are exempt from the law of abstinence. And St. Stephen is a holy day of obligation here. (By the way, there are a lot of countries, not the US I think but I think England, Italy and so on, where St. Stephen enjoys a public holiday too, sometimes called Boxing Day [as ours is called “Second Christmas Holiday”]. I do not understand why his feast is not of precept there too.)
The CIC of 1983 makes no mention of feasts of precept in that regard at all, but, intending to be more lenient, exempts all solemnities, i.e., first-class feasts. Which St. Stephen is not.
Well, the current law is the one in force, even for those who often (let’s be honest: not always) apply the stricter rules of the old one to themselves as a voluntary devotion.
I do think making use of the some-other-penitential-act-rule (for me, the Litany of the Passion of Christ according to our old prayerbook), even if one generally prefers not to do that, would be not untraditional on such a day. But I happened to be on my own, so I made some salmon. It was very tasty.