CHRISTMAS
727
CHRISTMAS
107) shows how hopeless is the calculation of Zachary's
week from any point before or after it. It seems im-
possible, on analogy of the relation of Passover and
Pentecost to Easter and Whitsuntide, to connect the
Nativity with the feast of Tabernacles, as did, e. g.,
Light foot (Horse Hebr. et Talm., II, 32), arguing from
O. T. prophecy, e. g. Zach., xiv, 16 sqq.; combining,
too, the fact of Christ's death in Nisan with Daniel's
prophecy of a three and one-half years' ministry (ix,
27), he puts the birth in Tisri. i. e. September. As
undesirable is it to connect 25 December with the
Eastern (December) feast of Dedication (Jos. Ant.
Jud. , XII, vii . 6) . The well-known solar feast , however,
of Natalis Invicti, celebrated on 25 December, has a
strong claim on the responsibility for our December
date. For the history of the solar cult, its position
in the Roman Empire, and syncretism with Mithraism,
Bee Cumont's epoch-making "Textes et Monuments"
etc., I, ii, 4, 6, p. 355. Mommsen (Corpus Inscrip-
tionum Latinarum, V, p. 33S) has collected the evi-
dence for the feast, which reached its climax of popu-
larity under Aurelian in 274. Filippo del Torre in
1700 first saw its importance; it is marked, as has
been said, without addition in Philocalus' Calendar.
It would be impossible here even to outline the history
of solar symbolism and language as applied to God,
the Messiah, and Christ in Jewish or Christian canoni-
cal, patristic, or devotional works. Hymns and Christ-
mas offices abound in instances; the texts are well
arranged by Cumont (op. cit., addit. note C, p. 355).
The earliest rapprochement oi the births of Christ and the sun is in Cypr., "De pasch. comp.", xix, "O quam prxeclare providentia ut lllo die quo natus est Sol . . . nasceretur Christ us." — "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which the Sun was born . . . Christ should be born." — In the fourth century, Chrysostom, "de Solst. et JEquin." (II, p. 118, ed. 1588), says: "Sed et dominus noster nascitur mense decembris . . . VIII Kal. ian. . . . Sed et Invicti Natalem appellant. Quia utique tarn invictus nisi dominus noster? . . . Vol quod dicant Solis esse nata- lem, ipse est Sol iustitia;. — "But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December . . . the eighth before the calends of January [25 December] . . . But they call it the 'Birthday of the Unconquered'. Who in- deed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . . ? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun of Justice." Already Tertullian (Apol., 16; cf. ad. Nat., I, 13; Orig. c. Cols., VIII, 67. etc.) had to assert that Sol was not the Christians' God; Augustine (Tract xxxiv, in Joan, in P. L., XXXV, 1652) de- nounces the heretical identification of Christ with Sol. Pope Leo I (Serin, xxvii innat. dom., VII, 4; xxii, II, 6 in P. L., LTV, 21S and 198) bitterly reproves solar survivals— Christians, on the very doorstep of the Apostles' basilica, turn to adore the rising sun. Sun- worship lias bequeathed features to modern popular worship in Armenia, where Christians had once tem- porarily and externally conformed to the cult of the material sun (Cumont. op. cit.. p. 356). Hut even should a deliberate and legitimate "baptism" of a pagan feast be seen here no more than the transference of the date need be supposed. The "mountain-birth" of Mithra and Christ's in the "grotto" have nothing in common: Mit lira's adoring shepherds (Cumont, op. <it., I. ii, 4. pp. 304 sqq.) are rather borrowed from Christian Bources than vice versa.
The origin of Christmas should not be sought in the
Saturnalia i 1-23 December) nor even in the midnight holy birth at Eleusis (see J. E. Harrison, Prolegom., p. 549) with its probable connexion through Phrygia with the Naasene heretics, or even with the Alexan- drian ceremony quoted above; nor yet in rites analo- gous to the midwinter cult at Delphi of the cradled Dionysus, with his revocation from the sea to a new birth (Harrison, op. cit., 402 sqq.). Duchesne (Les origines du culte chretien, Paris, 1902, 262 sqq.) ad-
vances the "astronomical" theory that, given 25
March as Christ's death-day [historically impossible,
but a tradition old as Tertullian (Adv. Jud., 8)], the
popular instinct , demanding an exact number of years
in a Divine life, would place His conception on the
same date, His birth 25 December. This theory is
best supported by the fact that certain Montanists
(Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., VII, 18) kept Easter on 6
April; both 25 December and 6 January are thus si-
multaneously explained. The reckoning, moreover,
is wholly in keeping with the arguments based on
number and astronomy and "convenience", then so
popular. Unfortunately, there is no contemporary
evidence for the celebration in the fourth century of
Christ's conception on 25 March. The present writer
is inclined to think that, be the origin of the feast in
East or West, and though the abundance of analogous
midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the
choice of the December date, the same instinct which
set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have suf-
ficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious cal-
culation, to set the Christian feast there too.
Liturgy and Custom. — The fixing of this date fixed those too of Circumcision and Presentation; of Expectation and, perhaps, Annunciation B. V. M. ; and of Nativity and Conception of the Baptist (cf. Thurston in Amer. Eccl. Rev., December, 1898). Till the tenth century Christmas counted, in papal reckoning, as the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, as it still does in Bulls; Boniface VIII (1294-1303) restored temporarily this usage, to which Germany held longest. Codex Theod., II, 8, 27 (cf. XV, 5, 5) forbids, in 425, circus games on 25 December; though not till Codex Just., Ill, 12. 6 (529) is cessation of work imposed. The Second Council of Tours (can. xi, xvii) proclaims, in 566 or 567, the sanctity of the "twelve days" from Christinas to Epiphany, and the duty of Advent fast; that of Agde (506), in can. lxiii, lxiv, orders a universal communion, and that of Braga (563) forbids fasting on Christmas Day. Pop- ular merry-making, however, so increased that the "Laws of King Cnut", fabricated c. I 1 10, order a fast from Christmas to Epiphany. The ( lelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries give three .Masses to this feast, and these, with a special and sublime martyr- ology. and dispensation, if necessary, from abstinence, still mark our usage. Though Rome gives three Masses to the Nativity only. Ildefonsus, a Spanish bishop, in 845, alludes to a triple Mass on Nativity, Easter, Whitsun, and Transfiguration (P. L., CVI, 888). These Masses, at midnight, dawn, and in die, were mystically connected with the aboriginal, Ju- daic. mikI Christian dispensations, or (as by St. Thom- as, Summa Theol., Ill, Q. lxxxiii, a. 2) to the triple "birth" of Christ: in Eternity, in Time, and in the Soul. Liturgical colours varied: black, white, red, or (e. g. at Narbonne) red, white, violet wire used (Durand, Rat. div. off., VI. 13). The Gloria was at first sung only in the first Mass of this day. The historical origin of this triple Mass is probably as fol- lows (cf. Thurston, in Amer. Eccl. Rev.. January, 1S99; Grisar, Anal. Rom., 1. .V.i5; Geschichte Roms . . . im Mittelalter I. 607, 397; Civ. Catt., 21 Sep- tember, 1895, etc.): The first Mass, celebrated at the Oratorium Proesepis in St. Mary Major — a church probably immediati K a imitated to the Bethlehem basilica -and the third, at Si. Peter's, reproduced ill Hume the double Christmas Office mentioned by Etheria (see above) at Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The second Ma - was celebrated by the pope in the
" chapel royal "of the Byzantine ( 'ourt officials on the Palatine, i. e. St. Anastasia's church, originally called, like the basilica at Constantinople, Anasta.sis, and like it buill at firsl to reproduce the Jerusalem Ana. ta-is basilica — and like it, finally, in abandoning tin' name "Anastasis" for that of the martyr St. isia (q. v.). The set aid therefore
