A popular devotion attached to the feast of the Holy Family, kept on the Sunday within the octave of Christmas, with February traditionally honoured as the month of the Holy Family because the Presentation in the Temple falls on the second of the month. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy encourages devotions that strengthen the family as the domestic church — common prayer, the blessing of the home, the Christian celebration of its feasts — and this devotion is chiefly practised in the home rather than in church.

Pray together as a household every day, even briefly: grace at meals, a decade of the Rosary in the evening, night prayers with the children. Put an image of the Holy Family where the family gathers. On the feast of the Holy Family, or on a family anniversary, make an act of consecration of the household to Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and ask the priest to bless your home. The novena to the Holy Family in the days before the feast, or through February, gives the devotion a shape; but the substance of it is the ordinary work, patience and forgiveness of Nazareth.