An expanded Martyrology:

The twenty-fifth Day of December (or thereabouts)

Some 13.7 billion years from the time when, in the beginning, divine power exploded into the void;

some 4 1/2 billion years from the cooling and formation of planet Earth, our home;

some 3 1/2 billion years from the creation of single-celled organisms;

some 4.4 million years from the oldest authenticated hominid skeleton;

some 160 million years from the earliest homo sapiens;

some 130 million years from the arrival of the first flowers;

some 10,000 years from the end of the last ice age and the  beginning of settlements;

some 7 1/2 thousand years from the time of Abraham;

some 1 1/2 thousand years from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;

some thousand years from David’s being anointed king;

in the 65th week according to the prophecy of Daniel;

in the 194th Olympiad;

in the 752nd year from the foundation of the City of Rome;

the 42nd year in the reign of Octavian Augustus:

Jesus Christ, the eternal God and Son of the eternal God,

desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,

was conceived by the Holy Spirit;

and nine months having passed since his conception, was born in Bethlehem of Judah of Mother mary,

and was made human.

Thus the nativity of Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

May everything you celebrate this special season bring abundant blessings to you and to our sacred world!