Biblical Archaeology Review has a scholarly examination of why Christmas is celebrated on December 25—and it’s likely not, as commonly believed, timed to coincide with a pagan holiday:
The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.
Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.
December 23rd, 2010 | 12:59 pm
[...] 25th: Why that date From Biblical Archeelogical Review http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/fir…e-christmas-2/ "…So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in [...]
December 24th, 2010 | 5:47 am
[...] HT: Joe Carter [...]
December 24th, 2010 | 7:16 pm
It’s all very nice, Joe, but totally wrong–and wrong-headed. In the first place, Christmas, as a distinct Feast, is a relatively late (i.e., 4th century) development. For another, before 25 December was the feast of Sol Invictus, it was the old Roman Saturnalia. For a third, the feast that Western Christians celebrated on 25 December before it became the Feast of the Nativity was called Epiphania (or Theophania), and incorporated all of the events of salvation history by which the Incarnate Christ revealed himself to the world–the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Visitation of the Magi, the Baptism in the Jordan, and even the Wedding at Cana. The same feast was celebrated in the East on 6 January, and it was not until the 4th century that Nativity became a distinct Feast through an exchange of feasts between the Eastern and Western Churches.
The eminent Jesuit historian, Father Robert F. Taft, explains this in his essay, “Liturgy in the Life of the Church” (1999), which also does a good job of explaining the real purpose of our liturgical feasts, and why such concerns as whether the Church co-opted a pre-existing Pagan feast are both irrelevant and ill-placed:
Contrary to what is always said, liturgical feasts are not celebrations of events in salvation history. They are celebrations of the mysteries of salvation revealed to us in the biblical narrative of those events. In the East, the original feast of the Nativity cycle was January 6. In the West, it was December 25. What both feasts celebrated was not the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, nor his baptism in the Jordan, but the mystery of the manifestation, originally known as “epiphania” (manifestation) or “theophania” (divine manifestation); i.e., the appearance of God’s salvation in the Incarnation of his only-begotten Son. So, originally, each feast included all of the scenarios at the beginning of the Gospels that concern Jesus’ first manifesting this salvation, in some cases including even the Marriage Feast in Cana in Jn 2:1-11. Only later did the several biblical scenarios get redistributed between the two days, as a result of an exchange of feasts between East and West. This, then, is why the same richness of Scripture readings found in the East on January 6 are found in the West on December 25.
So, if both traditions wish to preserve their identity, the answer is not for them to imitate each other blindly, but for each to return to the roots of its own heritage. In this case, the West needs to stop thinking that Christmas is centered on a medieval Italian invention, Baby Jesus in the presepio. For there is no Baby Jesus; there is only the Risen Glorified Lord seated at the right hand of the Father, and He and his saving mysteries is what Christmas and Easter and everything is about. The Western January 6 feast is not a feast of the Magi, but of the manifestation of salvation to the Gentiles, a thematic which the East celebrates on February 2, the feast the West calls the “Presentation of Jesus in the Temple” as recounted in Lk 2:22-38—but which in Greek is called the Hypophante or “Encounter”, the meeting of the Savior with those He has come to save.
December 25th, 2010 | 11:04 am
>>For there is no Baby Jesus; there is only the Risen Glorified Lord seated at the right hand of the Father, and He and his saving mysteries is what Christmas and Easter and everything is about.
Stuart, that is very good…
December 25th, 2010 | 7:58 pm
David,
Thanks. It is Fr. Robert Taft’s writing. An awesome man, in all senses of the word.
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