Resource recommendations? Earliest history of "Christmas"

Donnie Hale

I'm looking for details on how far back the Christian community had an annual celebration of the birth of Christ. I have sufficient details (I think on more recent historical factors that have influenced what modern Christmas looks like.

From a couple of places (e.g. C. E. Hill's book "Who Chose the Gospels?") I know that sometime in the second century a celebration of the resurrection was a Christian tradition in some form. I'm wondering if there's evidence of an annual advent celebration going back that far.

Any recommendations on books in Logos that might touch on that?

Thanks much,

Donnie

Sleiman

Donnie Hale said:

I have sufficient details (I think on more recent historical factors that have influenced what modern Christmas looks like.

you mean regarding good ol' St. Nick? [;)]

Donnie Hale said:

I'm wondering if there's evidence of an annual advent celebration going back that far.

Any recommendations on books in Logos that might touch on that?

Very interesting question indeed. Here's what I came up with after searching for Christmas under my history collection:

• from the Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis): logosres:bkpopesloomis;ref=Page.p_13 
  
  
  IX. TELESPHORUS
  Telesphorus, by nationality a Greek, previously an anchorite, occupied the see 11 years, 3 months and 21 days. He was bishop in the time of Antoninus and Marcus. (footnote: The Liberian Catalogue gives the consulships omitted here; viz. “from the consulship of Titianus and Gallicanus (A.D. 127) until the year when Cæsar and Balbinus were consuls (A.D. 137).”)
  
  He ordained that the fast of seven weeks should be kept before Easter. (footnote:The fast before Easter was observed before the pontificate of Telesphorus. It is described by Irenæus a few years later as a custom of the ancestors, dating back nearly to apostolic times. The length, however, was at first variable. See the interesting discussion in Eusebius’ Church History, lib. V, c. 24, trans. McGiffert, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, ser. II, vol. I, p. 243. Mommsen cites the passage here as an indication that the Lib. Pont. was not compiled until the seventh century. He points out that under Leo I, Gelasius and Gregory I the Lenten fast lasted only six weeks and that therefore our author must have written after the death of Gregory. Lib. Pont., p. xvii. Cf. Introduction, p. xii.)
  He was crowned with martyrdom. He appointed that at the season of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ masses should be celebrated during the night; for in general no one presumed to celebrate mass before tierce, the hour when our Lord ascended the cross; (footnote: The night mass at Christmas is still a feature of the Roman ritual. The author of the Lib. Pont. is the earliest writer to allude to it. It can hardly have been instituted before the date of the Nativity was fixed during the fourth century.
  
• from History of the Christian Church logosres:schaff;ref=VolumePage.V_3,_p_389;off=369 

  These two festivals form the heart of the church year. Less important was the feast of the Epiphany, or manifestation of Christ as Messiah. In the fourth century the Christmas festival was added to the two former leading feasts, and partially took the place of the earlier feast of Epiphany, which now came to be devoted particularly to the manifestation of Christ among the Gentiles.      [...]      The feast of Epiphany had spread from the East to the West. The feast of Christmas took the opposite course. We find it first in Rome, in the time of the bishop Liberius, who on the twenty-fifth of December, 360, consecrated Marcella, the sister of St. Ambrose, nun or bride of Christ, and addressed her with the words: “Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth-festival of thy bridegroom.

In addition to the above, the Catholic Encyclopedia has a very informative article that discusses the earliest celebrations: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm.

This is one of the reasons we really need to push this resource to make it to Logos.

Donnie Hale

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/542299#Comment_542299

Sleiman said:

Very interesting question indeed. Here's what I came up with after searching for Christmas under my history collection:

Thanks for the info and links - big help.

For everyone else: don't take that as an indication to stop adding helpful information and links.

Donnie

Mark Barnes

Donnie Hale said:

Any recommendations on books in Logos that might touch on that?

By the fourth century, two more great festivals were added. Epiphany (6 January), and Christmas (25 December). No one knew Christ’s real birthday, but in many parts of the northern hemisphere there had been ancient festivals of rejoicing in late December or early January, at the passing of the shortest day. The winter festival of the Romans was called “the festival of the Unconquered Sun”.

By this time Helena, the mother of the pro-Christian Roman Emperor Constantine (p. 83), had built the Church of the Nativity over the Bethlehem cave where Jesus was born. To this church, Bishop and people came in midnight procession on 6 January each year to celebrate His Epiphany (Greek for “appearing”). This festival was also connected with Christ’s baptism; when He “appeared” as God’s beloved Son.

The Armenian Church (see p. 93) still keeps Epiphany as the birthday of Christ; so does the Syrian Orthodox Church in India, though their date is 7 January.

Christmas (i.e. Christ-Festival) was first kept in Rome, but probably not before the 4th century, on 25 December, the same day as the pagan festival of the Unconquered Sun. The custom was taken up with enthusiasm, and rapidly spread eastwards. Wherever 25 December was accepted, as the date for commemorating Christ’s birth, 6 January (Epiphany) ceased to be connected with that event, and was associated with His baptism only. However, when Western Christians adopted Epiphany as a festival they changed its association again, and connected it with His “appearing” to the Gentiles, and especially the “wise men from the east” (Matt. 2:1).

John Foster and W. H. C. Frend, The First Advance: Church History 1, AD 29-500, Rev. ed. with additions (London: SPCK, 1991–), 33.

Mark Barnes

1. The birthdays of rulers were celebrated in the → Roman Empire, even after their deaths. Christians naturally felt inclined to honor the birth of their Kyrios (→ Christological Titles). In the East the commemoration of Christ’s nativity was January 6, the beginning of the solar year. This Feast of Epiphany celebrated especially Jesus’ baptism. When Epiphany spread to the West, it celebrated the visit of the Magi to the Christ child (Matthew 2). About 330 the Roman church assigned December 25 as the birth of Christ. By the turn of the fifth century, the Roman practice was gradually becoming universal. Where both December 25 and January 6 were observed, this created a season of 12 days (→ Church Year).

It has been thought that the Roman date of December 25 was chosen for the nativity of Christ to counter the festival of the Invincible Sun (Natale solis invicti), which Emperor Aurelian (269/70–75) established on December 25, 274, in honor of the Syrian sun god Emesa. It is more likely, however, that the December 25 date for the birth of Christ stems from the tradition of commemorating both the conception (annunciation) and death of Christ on March 25.

2. In the Roman tradition three → masses were celebrated on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: missa in nocte (midnight), missa in aurora (dawn), and missa in die (during the day). The Gospels of these masses are the angelic announcement (Luke 2:1–14), the visit of the shepherds (Luke 2:15–20), and the → incarnation (John 1:1–18). The masses are often said to symbolize Christ’s threefold birth (of the Father, of Mary, and in believers).
In Spain and Gaul a season of preparation for Christmas called Advent developed. Regulations on → fasting issued by Bishop Perpetuus of Tours (d. 490) called for three days of fasting per week from St. Martin’s Day (November 11) to Christmas. This “St. Martin’s Lent” was really a 40-day fast in preparation for baptism on Epiphany. Because this was a penitential season, the Gloria and Alleluia were dropped from the Mass, and purple → vestments were worn. The theme was repentance in preparation for the second coming of Christ in judgment (→ Parousia). In Rome there developed a two-week preparation for Christmas centered on the annunciation, with focus on the historical nativity of Christ. These two Western traditions were merged to produce the four-week season of Advent, which combines the second coming, the ministry of → John the Baptist, and the annunciation. In the Roman → liturgy the Alleluia was never dropped during Advent, and in more recent times the season has been seen as one of → hope rather than → penitence.

Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley, The Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI; Leiden, Netherlands: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Brill, 1999–2003), 454–455.

Todd Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/542316#Comment_542316

Donnie Hale said:

For everyone else: don't take that as an indication to stop adding helpful information and links.

More info from Williston Walker:

"By the fourth century the observance of Ascension was general. The chief addition to the festivals of the church which belongs to this period is that of Christmas. Apparently no feast of Christ’s nativity was held in the church till into the fourth century. By the second century, January 6 had been observed by the Gnostic disciples of Basilides as the date of Jesus’ baptism. At a time not now apparent, but probably about the beginning of the fourth century, this was regarded in the East as the time of Christ’s birth also, by reason of an interpretation of Luke 3:23, which made Him exactly thirty years old at His baptism. Other factors were at work, however. It was an opinion in the third century that the universe was created at the vernal equinox, reckoned in the Julian calendar as March 25. Similar habits of thought would make the beginning of the new creation, the inception of the incarnation, fall on the same day, and therefore Christ’s birth on the winter solstice, December 25. That that date, when the sun begins to turn, was the birthday of the Mithraic Sol Invictus, was not probably the reason of the choice, though it may well have commended it as substituting a great Christian for a popular heathen festival. At all events, the celebration of December 25 as Christmas appears first in Rome, apparently in 353 or 354, though it may date from 336. From Rome it spread to the East, being introduced into Constantinople, probably by Gregory of Nazianzus, between 378 and 381. A sermon of Chrysostom, preached in Antioch in 388, declares that the celebration was then not ten years old in the East, and the discourse was delivered, it would appear, on the first observance of December 25 in the Syrian capital. It reached Alexandria between 400 and 432. From its inauguration, Christmas became one of the great festivals of the church, comparable only with Easter and Pentecost."

Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), 169–170.
logosres:hstchrschr;ref=Page.p_169;off=524

Walker's footnotes reference Kirsopp Lake, writing in Hastings’s Encyclopœdia of Religion and Ethics, which is the other great encyclopedia from community pricing we need to get into Logos. Bid now:

https://www.logos.com/product/8495/encyclopaedia-of-religion-and-ethics

Mark Barnes

They're not in Logos, but:

• http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ERahko4FXJgC
• http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6MXPEMbpjoAC

Sleiman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/542322#Comment_542322

Todd Phillips said:

Walker's footnotes reference Kirsopp Lake, writing in Hastings’s Encyclopœdia of Religion and Ethics, which is the other great encyclopedia from community pricing we need to get into Logos. Bid now:

https://www.logos.com/product/8495/encyclopaedia-of-religion-and-ethics

[Y]

Todd Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/542338#Comment_542338

Sleiman said:

Todd Phillips said:

Walker's footnotes reference Kirsopp Lake, writing in Hastings’s Encyclopœdia of Religion and Ethics, which is the other great encyclopedia from community pricing we need to get into Logos. Bid now:

https://www.logos.com/product/8495/encyclopaedia-of-religion-and-ethics

Here's a link to the ERE "Christmas" article by Lake:

https://archive.org/stream/encyclopaediaofr003hast#page/601/mode/1up

The article is 8 double-columned pages long, and over half of it is devoted to origin of the observance of Christmas.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/542355#Comment_542355

Looking at Sermons in the Early Church Fathers is another source of useful information.

D. The Festal Calendar of the Cappadocians

Although we have looked at five of the festal sermons of Gregory of Nazianzus which are especially brilliant, all three Cappadocian Fathers preached very similar sermons for the feast days. We now need to take a more general look at the festal calendar of the Cappadocians to learn about the development of this particular genre of Christian preaching.


Hughes Oliphant Old, The Patristic Age, vol. 2, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 95.

Logos is weak on liturgics but another line of search is:

The paschal season, from the six days of the paschal fast to the final day of Pentecost, can be understood to be in more or less direct continuity with the OT festivals of Passover-Unleavened Bread and Shabbuoth (Weeks). Evidence for a Christian continuance of the autumnal festival of Tabernacles, on the other hand, is lacking. In spite of that, patristic writers regularly appealed to OT texts regarding the three pilgrim festivals as authority for the Christian observance of Pascha, Pentecost, and the feast of the Epiphany (January 6).
There is a possible (but highly hypothetical) connection between Tabernacles and Epiphany. MD Goulder has suggested that the evangelists arranged their materials to correspond to the pentateuch readings that began on Simchat Torah, at the conclusion of the Tabernacles celebration, and we shall suggest below that the Epiphany marked the beginning of a gospel course reading.
The oriental nativity festival of Epiphany, with its occidental parallel of December 25, constitutes one of the more thorny questions in the history of the liturgical year. Both festivals have celebrated the nativity of Christ, but other themes have also attached to the Epiphany: the baptism of Jesus, the miracle at the Cana wedding-feast, the visit of the Magi, and even (in one source) the Transfiguration.
Two lines of interpretation are encountered for the origin of these festivals of the nativity. The “History of Religions” school sees both as derived from pre-Christian festivals, December 25 from the “birthday of the Invincible Sun” (dies natalis solis invicti) at Rome, and January 6 from the “birth of Aion” at Alexandria.
...

An alternative to this “history of religions” approach was offered by Mgr. Louis Duchesne at the end of the last century, and his suggestion is spoken of today as “the computation hypothesis.” Observing that symbolic number systems are intolerant of fractions, he suggested that the date of Christ’s death was taken to be also the date of the beginning of his life at his conception, and therefore his nativity was set nine months after that date. Where, as at Rome in the early 3rd century, March 25 was regarded as the date of the passion, assignment of the conception to the same date would yield a nativity date of December 25. In the East, the association of the passion (and conception) with April 6 would give a nativity date of January 6.


Peter E. Fink, The New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 155–156, 157

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/542410#Comment_542410

For some December 25 history, can search Logos for:

"winter solstice" NEAR "25"

Keep Smiling

Rosie Perera

There was a recent article on this:

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/how-december-25-became-christmas