§ 77. The Christmaa Cycle.
Besides the general literature given in the previous section, there are many special treatises on the origin of the Christmas festival, by Byn^us, Kindi.kr, Ittig, Vogel, Werxsdoef, Jablonsky, Planck, Hagenbacii, p. Cassel, &c. Comp. August! : ArchsBol. i. 533.
The Cin-istmas festival ' is the celebration of the incarnation of the Son of God. It is occupied, therefore, with the event which forms the centre and turning-point of the history of the world. It is of all the festivals the one most thoroughly interwoven with the popular and family life, and stands at the head of the great feasts in the Western church year. It continues to be, in the entire Catholic world and in the greater part of Protestant Christendom, the grand jubilee of children, on which innumerable gifts celebrate the intinite love of God in the gift of his only-begotten Son. It kindles in mid-winter a lioly fire of love and gi-atltude, and preaches in the longest night the rising of the Sun of life and the glory of the Lord. It denotes the advent of the true golden age, of the freedom and equality of all the redeemed befoi'c God and in God. Nc one can measure the joy and blessing which from year to jeai flow forth upon all ages of life from the contemplation of the
' Natalis, or natalitia Domini or CVirinti, ijfifpa yivf^Kius, yei't ikia
r»V XoilTTOV.
§ 77. THE CHKIST]MAS CI' CLE. 395
holy eliild Jesus in liis heavenly innocence and divine humility.
Notwithstanding this deep significance and wide popularity tlie festival of the birth of the Lord is of comparatively lata institution. This may doubtless be accounted for in the following manner : In the first place, no corresponding festival was presented by the Old Testament, as in the case of Easter and Pentecost. In the second place, the day and month of the birth of Christ are nowhere stated in the gospel history, and cannot be certainly determined. Again : the church lingered first of all about tlie death and resurrection of Christ, the completed fact of redemption, and made this the centre of the weekly worship and the church year. Finally : the earlier feast of Epiphany aSbrded a substitute. The artistic religious impulse, however, which produced the whole church year, must sooner or later have called into existence a festival which forms the groundwork of all other annual festivals in honor of Christ. For, as Chrysostorn, some ten years after the introduction of this anniversary in Antioch, justly said, without the birth of Christ there were also no baptism, passion, resurrection, or ascension, and no outpouring of tlie Holy Ghost ; hence no feast of Epiphany, of Easter, or of Pentecost.
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 w^hat multitudes are come to the birth-festival of thy bridegroom." ' This passage implies that the festival was already existing and familiar. Christmas was introduced in Antioch about the year 380 ; in Alexandria, where the feast of Epiphany was celebrated as the nativity of Christ, not till about 430. Chrysostom, who delivered the Christmas homilj in Antioch on the 25th of December, 386,'
' Ambiose, De virgin, iii. 1: "Videa quantus ad natalem Sponsi tui popu'vs touvenerit, ut nemo impaatua recedit? " ' Opp. ii. 384.
396 THIBD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
already calls it, notwithstanding its recent introdu ttion some ten years before), tlie fundamental feast, or tlie root, froii; which all otlier Christian festivals grow forth.
The Christmas festival was probably the Christian transformation or regeneration of a series of kindred heatlien festivaU — the Saturnalia, Sigillaria, Juvenalia, and Brumalia — which were kept in Rome in the month of December, in commemoration of the golden age of universal freedom and equality, and in honor of the unconquered sun, and which were great holidays, especially for slaves and children.' This connection accounts for many customs of the Christmas season, like the giving of presents to children and to the poor, the lighting of wax tapers, perhaps also the erection of Christmas trees, and gives them a Christian import ; while it also betrays the origin of the many excesses in which the unbelieving world indulges at this season, in wanton perversion of the true Christmas mirth, but which, of course, no more forbid right use, than the abuses of the Bible or of any other gift of God. Had the Christmas festival arisen in the period of the j)ersecutlon, its derivation from these pagan festivals would be refuted by the then reigning abhorrence of everything heathen ; but in the Nicene age this rigidness of opposition between the church and the world was in a great measure softened by the general conversion of the heathen. Besides, there lurked in those pagan festivals themselves, in spite of all their sensual abuses, a deep meaning and an adaptation to a real want ; they might be called unconscious prophecies of the Christmas feast. Finally, the church fathers themselves' confirm the symbolical reference of tlie feast of the birth of Christ, the Sun of righteousness, the Light
' The Saturnalia were the feast of Saturn oi- Kronos, in representation of the golden days of his reign, when all labor ceased, prisoners were set free, slaves wenl about in gentlemen's clothes and in the hat (the mark of a freeman), and all classes gave themselves up to mirth and rejoicing. The Sigillaria were a festival of imago;and puppets at the close of the Saturuaha on the 21st and 2'2d of December, when miniature images of the gods, wax tapers, and all sorts of articks of beauty and luxury were distributed to children and among kinsfolli. The BrumaUa, from brum? (brevissima, the shortest day), had reference to the winter solstice, and the retur: of the Sol invictus.
' Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Leo thc> Great, and otliers.