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For many centuries, Christian writers accepted that Christmas was the
actual date on which Jesus was born. In the early eighteenth century,
scholars began proposing alternative explanations. Isaac Newton argued
that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the winter
solstice, which in ancient times was marked on December 25. In 1743,
German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on
December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis
Solis Invicti and was therefore a "paganization" that debased the true
church. In 1889, Louis Duchesne suggested that the date of Christmas
was calculated as nine months after March 25, the traditional date of
the conception of Jesus. On the Roman calendar, March 25 was the date
of the spring equinox. In modern times, it is celebrated as
Annunciation.
Non-Christian Celebration
A winter festival was the most popular festival of the year in many
cultures. Reasons included the fact that less agricultural work needs
to be done during the winter, as well as people expecting longer days
and shorter nights after the winter solstice in the Northern
Hemisphere. Modern Christmas with pagan customs include: gift-giving
and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity
from the Roman New Year; and Yule logs and various foods from Teutonic
feasts. Pagan Scandinavia celebrated a winter festival called Yule,
held in the late December to early January period. As Northern Europe
was the last part to Christianize, its pagan traditions had a major
influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In
English, the word Yule is synonymous with Christmas, a usage first
recorded in 900.
Patristic Developments
The New Testament does not give a date for the birth of Jesus. "There
is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not
assigned Christ's birth," according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Around AD 200, Clement of Alexandria wrote that a group in Egypt
celebrated the nativity on Pachon 25. This corresponds to January 6,
now Epiphany. Tertullian (d. 220) does not mention Christmas as a major
feast day in the Church of Roman Africa. In Chronographai, a reference
work published in 221, Sextus Julius Africanus suggests that Jesus was
conceived on the spring equinox, which implies birth in late December.
De Pascha Computus, a calendar of feasts produced in 243, gives March
28 as the date of the nativity. In 245, the theologian Origen of
Alexandria stated that, "only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod)"
celebrated their birthdays. In 303, Christian writer Arnobius ridiculed
the idea of celebrating the birthdays of gods, which suggests that
Christmas was not yet a feast at this time.
Feast Established
The earliest reference to the celebration of the nativity on December
25 is found in the Chronography of 354, an illuminated manuscript
compiled in Rome in 354. In the East, early Christians celebrated the
birth of Christ as part of Epiphany (January 6), although this festival
focused on the baptism of Jesus.
Christmas was promoted in the Christian East as part of the revival of
Catholicism following the death of the pro-Arian Emperor Valens at the
Battle of Adrianople in 378. The feast was introduced to Constantinople
in 379, and to Antioch in about 380. The feast disappeared after
Gregory of Nazianzus resigned as bishop in 381, although it was
reintroduced by John Chrysostom in about 400.
 The Twelve Days of
Christmas end on January 5. December 26 is St.
Stephen's Day and January 6 is Feast of Epiphany This period
encompasses the major feasts surrounding the birth of Christ. In the
Latin Rite, one week after Christmas Day, January 1, has traditionally
been the celebration the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of
Christ, but since Vatican II, this feast has been celebrated as the
Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.
Middle Ages
In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas Day was overshadowed by Epiphany,
which in the west focused on the visit of the magi. But the Medieval
calendar was dominated by Christmas-related holidays. The forty days
before Christmas became the "forty days of St. Martin" (which began on
November 11, the feast of St. Martin of Tours), now known as Advent. In
Italy, former Saturnalian traditions were attached to Advent. Around
the 12th century, these traditions transferred again to the Twelve Days
of Christmas (December 26 – January 6); a time that appears in the
liturgical calendars as Christmastide or Twelve Holy Days.
The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne
was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day in 800. King Edmund the Martyr was
anointed on Christmas in 855 and King William I of England was crowned
on Christmas Day 1066.
By the High Middle Ages, the holiday had become so prominent that
chroniclers routinely noted where various magnates celebrated
Christmas. King Richard II of England hosted a Christmas feast in 1377
at which twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep were eaten. The Yule
boar was a common feature of medieval Christmas feasts. Caroling also
became popular, and was originally a group of dancers who sang. The
group was composed of a lead singer and a ring of dancers that provided
the chorus. Various writers of the time condemned caroling as lewd,
indicating that the unruly traditions of Saturnalia and Yule may have
continued in this form. "Misrule" — drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling
— was also an important aspect of the festival. In England, gifts were
exchanged on New Year's Day, and there was special Christmas ale.
Christmas during the Middle Ages
was a public festival that
incorporating ivy, holly, and other evergreens. Christmas gift-giving
during the Middle Ages was usually between people with legal
relationships, such as tenant and landlord.
Reformation Into the 19th Century
During the Reformation, some Protestants condemned Christmas
celebration as "trappings of popery" and the "rags of the Beast." The
Roman Catholic Church responded by promoting the festival in a more
religiously oriented form. Following the Parliamentarian victory over
King Charles I during the English Civil War, England's Puritan rulers
banned Christmas, in 1647. Pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several
cities, and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who
decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans. The
Restoration of Charles II in 1660 ended the ban, but many clergymen
still disapproved of Christmas celebration.
In Colonial America, the Puritans of New England disapproved of
Christmas. Celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. At the
same time, Christian residents of Virginia and New York observed the
holiday freely. Pennsylvania German Settlers, pre-eminently the
Moravian settlers of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Lititz in Pennsylvania and
the Wachovia Settlements in North Carolina, were enthusiastic
celebrators of Christmas. The Moravians in Bethlehem had the first
Christmas trees in America as well as the first Nativity Scenes.
Christmas fell out of favor in the United States after the American
Revolution, when it was considered an English custom. George Washington
attacked Hessian mercenaries on Christmas during the Battle of Trenton
in 1777. (Christmas being much more popular in Germany than in America
at this time.) By the 1820s, sectarian tension had eased and British
writers, including William Winstanly began to worry that Christmas was
dying out. These writers imagined Tudor Christmas as a time of
heartfelt celebration, and efforts were made to revive the holiday.
Charles Dickens's book A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, played a
major role in reinventing Christmas as a holiday emphasizing family,
goodwill, and compassion as opposed to communal celebration and
hedonistic excess. In America, interest in Christmas was revived in the
1820s by several short stories by Washington Irving which appear in his
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon and "Old Christmas," and by Clement
Clarke Moore's 1822 poem A Visit From St. Nicholas (popularly known by
its first line: Twas the Night Before Christmas). Irving's stories
depicted harmonious warm-hearted holiday traditions he claimed to have
observed in England. Although some argue that Irving invented the
traditions he describes, they were widely imitated by his American
readers. The poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas popularized the tradition
of exchanging gifts and seasonal Christmas shopping began to assume
economic importance. In her 1850 book "The First Christmas in New
England," Harriet Beecher Stowe includes a character who complains that
the true meaning of Christmas was lost in a shopping spree. Christmas
was declared a United States Federal holiday in 1870, signed into law
by President Ulysses S. Grant.
Information
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Images Courtesy of Stock.XCHNG
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