The St. Andrew Christmas Novena: Full Prayer and 2026 Calendar

The St. Andrew Christmas Novena Prayer

You will see small differences between prayer cards: "in the piercing cold" or "in piercing cold", "the most pure Virgin" or "a most pure Virgin", "at a stable". None of them matter. The heart of the prayer is the same in all of them: you stand in spirit at the manger at the hour Christ was born, and you ask the Father to hear you for his Son's sake.

What Is the St. Andrew Christmas Novena?

The St. Andrew Christmas Novena is a devotion of the Advent season that repeats one short prayer fifteen times a day for the whole run-up to Christmas. Its author is unknown. It takes its popular name from the day it starts, the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle on 30 November, and it is called a novena by custom even though it lasts about 25 days instead of nine.

The starting date is well chosen. The First Sunday of Advent is always the Sunday closest to St. Andrew's day, so his feast sits right at the door of the season. And Andrew is the right saint for it. He was the first disciple to follow Jesus, and the first thing he did was go and find his brother: "We have found the Messiah" (John 1:41). Later he brought Jesus the boy with five loaves and two fish (John 6:8-9). Andrew brings people and their needs to Christ. This prayer asks you to do the same with yours.

The prayer is approved, it is simple, and it trains the one thing Advent is for: keeping your mind on the coming of Christ while the world around you is rushing at the shops. Fifteen times a day you remember the hour he was born. It is hard to drift far from God when you do that.

How to Pray the St. Andrew Novena 15 Times a Day

Pray the prayer fifteen times every day from 30 November to Christmas, all at once or spread through the day, holding one intention for the whole novena. Here is how most people make it work.

1. Choose one intention on 30 November and write it down. Keep the same one to the end.
2. Split the fifteen. Five with breakfast, five at lunch, five at bedtime is the classic family pattern. Commuters pray all fifteen on the train in five minutes.
3. Count on rosary beads. One decade plus five more beads gives you fifteen. Or use your fingers three times over, or a tally on your phone.
4. Pray slowly. Picture the cave at Bethlehem: the cold, the dark, the newborn child. The words are short so that your attention can stay on the scene.
5. End each set with your intention in your own words, and a Hail Mary for the mother who knelt there first.

Missed a day? Most people simply add the missed fifteen to the next day. The novena is a pious custom, so no sin is involved in missing it, and God is not keeping count against you. Keep going.

St. Andrew Novena 2026 Calendar

In 2026 the novena runs from Monday 30 November to Thursday 24 December, alongside the whole of Advent. Here are the landmark days, so you always know where you are.

Some families continue through Christmas Day itself, which makes 26 days and 390 prayers. Either way is fine. For the full Advent calendar, the wreath and a week-by-week plan, see our guide to Advent 2026.

Does the St. Andrew Novena Work?

The St. Andrew Novena works the way all Christian prayer works: God hears every prayer made in faith and answers it in the way that is best for you, which is sometimes yes, sometimes not yet, and sometimes something better than you asked. Jesus promised, "Ask, and it will be given you" (Matthew 7:7), and in the same breath said the Father gives "good things to those who ask him" (Matthew 7:11).

You will find stories online of remarkable answers to this novena, and some of them may be true. You will also find chain-message promises that guarantee results if you pray it a certain way or pass it on. Those promises are superstition and carry no Church authority. The prayer itself asks for your desires "through the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ", which puts the answer where it belongs: in God's hands.

What to Pray For: Choosing Your Intention

Pray for one intention that genuinely matters to you, and include a spiritual one alongside it. The prayer asks God to "grant my desires", and it is fine to name a concrete need. Many single people pray it for a future husband or wife. Parents pray it for a child who has stopped going to Mass. People pray it for a job, a healing, a reconciliation.

Then add one request for yourself that you would be embarrassed to admit you need: patience with your spouse, freedom from a habit, the courage to go to confession before Christmas. Advent is a season of repentance as well as waiting, and Christmas is better received by a clean heart. If it has been a long time, our examination of conscience and guide on how to go to confession make the first step easy. Book it now, before the queues of Christmas week.

Pair the Novena With the Rest of Advent

The novena is five minutes a day. Use it as the anchor for a fuller Advent, and the weeks before Christmas will change you.

• Sunday Mass on all four Sundays of Advent, and on 8 December, a holy day of obligation in the United States in 2026.
• Confession in the second or third week of Advent.
• The Rosary, especially the Joyful Mysteries, which walk from the Annunciation to Bethlehem. Our guide to praying the Rosary has them all.
• One act of charity a week for someone who will be alone at Christmas.
• Make a consecration. If you start on 29 November, the 33-day consecration to Mary ends on 1 January, and the consecration to St. Joseph started on 25 November ends on the Holy Family, 27 December.

Who Was St. Andrew?

St. Andrew was a fisherman from Bethsaida in Galilee (John 1:44), the brother of Simon Peter, and a disciple of John the Baptist before he followed Jesus (John 1:35-40). The Eastern Churches call him the Protokletos, the "first-called". He appears at key moments in John's Gospel: bringing Peter, bringing the boy with the loaves, and bringing the Greeks who wanted to see Jesus (John 12:20-22).

Tradition holds that he preached around the Black Sea and in Greece and was crucified at Patras, on the X-shaped cross now called the saltire or St. Andrew's cross. He is the patron of Scotland, whose flag carries his cross, and of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Every year the Holy See sends a delegation to the Patriarch for his feast on 30 November, and the Patriarchate sends one to Rome for Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June: the two brothers, still bringing the Churches together.