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November 28, 2006

Il Papa in Turchia and Advent quickly approaching... What are Western Christians to do? I am reminded of a discussion concerning the (questionable?) date of Christmas that occurred in a patristics class at the Divinity School.

The impetus for Christmas falling on 25 December has been widely disputed over the years. The most widely circulating reason in academic circles these days is that the Church chose 25 December because this was the celebration of the Eastern god Sol Invictus, the unconquered god. This was an Aurelian addition to the Roman pantheon, occurring quite late in 275. Under this theory, which is very, very popular among revisionists, the Church simply adopted a popular pagan feast to "win" over the people sometime later, possibly at the beginning of Constantine's reign. Once Constantine "authorized" the Faith, the celebration of the Feast was set and the rest is history. Thus, Christmas becomes simply another victim of Constantine's sword.

But this theory is not bullet-proof. It fails to consider that Christ is called the "Sun of Justice" in Malachi 4:2, and that many of the Church fathers thought that perhaps Christ's birth coincided with the beginning of a new solar cycle - the winter solstice. Looking to Scripture for support, the Fathers reckoned six months from the annunciation of St. John the Baptist (which was assumed to be 24 September) and came to 25 March, (the Feast of the Annunciation) as the date of the Incarnation. Nine months later, 25 December, would be Christ's birth. Scripture and biology are satisfied!

The more glaring problems with the academy's accepted theory are purely historical. (1) The oldest surviving calendar of the Roman Church, dating from 354, organizes the whole church year around Christmas, which seems very odd if the date of the Feast had been chosen only forty to fifty years before. (2) Further, Augustine tells us of how the Donatists refused to celebrate Epiphany along with the other churches in northern Africa. Yet they did not refuse to celebrate Christmas. Now, is it not odd that a heretical group who refused to attend Mass with other Christians because the others had gone soft during the Decian persecutions would celebrate a Feast introduced under pagan auspices? It is a non sequitur, and thus it is most clearly the case that Christmas was being celebrated on 25 December for some time before the schism of 303. (To get an idea of the length of time it takes for feasts to "settle," consider that it took nearly 40 years for the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (before Vatican II sacked the Roman Kalender and removed the Feast; JPII slightly restored it on 3 Jan. as an "optional feast") to spread in use throughout northern Europe during the early 16th century - with the aid of a printing press no less.)

But the most convincing argument against the Sol Invictus theory is that the early Church celebrated the Annunciation and the Passion on the same date, 25 March. Nine months later, we have 25 December.

There is an odd emphasis among liberal Christians in the seminary on historiography. This, I think, is a direct result of the growth, and now dominance in the institution, of higher criticism. And this is not to say that every result of higher criticism reaps negative results for the Faith. Perhaps the conception of historical inquiry as handmaiden of skepticism may be revisited.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at November 28, 2006 08:47 PM

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Posted by: Michael LoPrete at November 29, 2006 09:38 AM | permalink

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