RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Christians Christmas
carry the Gospel to the people outside the church building, working in harmony with the pastor. To carry this idea into effect, he founded the German Evangelistic Union, in conjunction with Bernstorif and Piickler. He purchased in Bonn a disused Presbyterian chapel with a large house attached, and turned it into a training-school for evangelists. After his death the institution was transferred to Barmen, where there was thought to be a wider field for its work. He was also an enthusiastic advocate of foreign missions, and in 1874, with Warneck, founded the Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift , in which most of his writings on missionary topics first appeared. The best known of these is Der gegemvdrtige Stand der evangelischen Heidenmission (Giltersloh, 1879; Eng. transl., London, 1880). Another of his numerous works which was translated into English was his sharp arraignment of England for permitting and even encouraging the opium traffic, Der indobritische Opiumhandel und seine Wirkungen (1878; Eng. transl., London, 1879). (E. Sachsse.)
Bibliography: Zum Geddchtniss Theodor Christliebs, Bonn, 1889; Mrs. T. Christlieb, Theodor Ckristlieb of Bonn, London, 1892 (by his widow).
CHRISTMAS: The supposed anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, occurring on Dec. 25. No sufficient data, however, exist, for the determina- "tion of the month or the day of the event. Efforts to reach a fixed date for Zacharias's ministration and to combine this with the " sixth The Day of month " mentioned in connection
Christ's with the annunciation to Mary (Luke Birth not i. 26) have given no assured result.
Known. Hippolytus seems to have been the first to fix upon Dec. 25. He had reached the conviction that Jcsus's life from conception to crucifixion was precisely thirty-three years and that both events occurred on Mar. 25. By calculating nine months from the annunciation or conception he arrived at Dec. 25 as the day of Christ's birth. The uncertainty of all the data discredits the computation. There is no historical evidence that our Lord's birthday was celebrated during the apostolic or early postapostolic times. The uncertainty that existed at the beginning of the third century in the minds of Hippolytus and others— Hippolytus earlier favored Jan. 2, Clement of Alexandria {Strom., i. 21) " the 25th day of Pachon" (=May 20), while others, according to Clement, fixed upon Apr. 18 or 19 and Mar. 28— proves that no Christmas festival had been established much before the middle of the century. Jan. 6 was earlier fixed upon as the date of the baptism or spiritual birth of Christ, and the feast of Epiphany (q.v.) was celebrated by the Basilidian Gnostics in the second century (cf. Clement of Alexandria, ut sup.) and by catholic Christians by about the beginning of the fourth century.
The earUest record of the recognition of Dec. 25 as a church festival is in the Philocalian Calendar (copied 354 but representing Roman practise in 336; cf. Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, p. 617; MPL, xiu.; Lightfoot, The Liberian Calendar, m his Clement of Rome, vol. i., p. 246). In the East the celebration of Jan. 6 as the physical as well
as the spiritual birthday of the Lord prevailed generally as early as the first half of the fourth century. Chrysostom (in 386) states that
Earliest the celebration of the birth of Christ
Traces of " according to the flesh " was not inthe Church augurated at Antioch until ten years
Festival, before that date._ He intimatesThat tins festival, approved by himself, was opposed by many. An Armenian writer of the eleventh century states that the Christmas festival, invented in Rome by a heretic, Artemon, was first celebrated in Constantinople in 373. In Egypt the Western birthday festival was opposed during the early years of the fifth century, but was celebrated in Alexandria as early as 432. The Jerusalem church was celebrating birth and baptism on the same day (Jan. 6) skbaut the middle of the fourth century, the former at Bethlehem, the latter at~EITe~7ofdan, although the twenty-mile journey between involved great inconveniences (supposed letter of Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem to Bishop Julius of Rome, preserved in Combefis, Historia haresis monothelitarum) . The Jerusalem bishop asks the Roman bishop to ascertain the real date of Christ's birth in order that, if possible, the practical difficulty may be overcome. Julius is represented as sending to Cyril a calculation in favor of Dec. 25, based upon the supposition (derived from Josephus) that Zacharias's vision took place at the Feast of Tabernacles. The Jerusalem church, however, persisted till 549 or later in celebrating birth and baptism on Jan. 6 (Cosmas Indicopleustes). The Christmas festival has never been adopted by the Armenians, the physical and spiritual birthdays being still celebrated conjointly on Jan. 6.
The wide-spread conviction during the early centuries that the baptism of Jesus was the occasion of his spiritual birth, or his
Relation adoption as Son of God and his exalto the tation to divine rank and power, Epiphany, tended to magnify the anniversary of his baptism and to cause comparative indifference as regards the precise date of his birth according to the flesh. In two Latin homilies, ascribed by some to Ambrose of Milan (4th cent.) and by others to Maximus of Turin (5th cent.), Jan. 6 is declared to be the birthday of the Lord Jesus, " whether he was born of the Virgin on that day or was born again in baptism." It is his " natal feast," his " nativity both of flesh and of spirit." As thirty years before he " was given forth through the Virgin," so on the same day he was " regenerated " and " sanctified " " through the mystery." The writer, or an interpolator, virtually contradicts the statement about Christ's regeneration by explaining that " Christ is baptized, not in order that he may be sanctified by the waters, but that he may himself sanctify the waters."
The naive adoptionism that was so widely prevalent till the end of the second century in Syria, Asia Minor, Italy, northern Africa, and elsewhere, and for centuries later in Armenia, Spain, etc., was gradually displaced by the formulation and general acceptance of a christology (based upon the prologue of John's Gospel and the Epistles of Paul)
Christmas Ohristolog-y