Christmas

Part V: More Origins of Date and
Liturgy and Custom

The origin of Christmas should not be sought in the Saturnalia (1-23 December) nor even in the midnight holy birth at Eleusis (see J.E. Harrison, Prolegom. p.549) with its probable connection through Phrygia with the Naasene heretics, or even with the Alexandrian ceremony quoted above; nor yet in rites analogous to the midwinter cult at Delphi of the cradled Dionysus, with his revocation from the sea to a new birth (Harrison, op. cit. 402 sqq.).

The astronomical theory

Duchesne (Les origines du culte chrétien, Paris, 1902, 262 sqq.) advances the "astronomical" theory that, given 25 March as Christ's death-day [historically impossible, but a tradition old as Tertullian (Adv. Jud. 8)], the popular instinct, demanding an exact number of years in a Divine life, would place His conception on the same date, His birth 25 December. This theory is best supported by the fact that certain Montanists (Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. VII 18) kept Easter on 6 April; both 25 December and 6 January are thus simultaneously explained. The reckoning, moreover, is wholly in keeping with the arguments based on number and astronomy and "convenience", then so popular. Unfortunately, there is no contemporary evidence for the celebration in the fourth century of Christ's conception on 25 March.

Conclusion

The present writer is inclined to think that, be the origin of the feast in East or West, and though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too.

LITURGY AND CUSTOM

The calendar

The fixing of this date fixed those too of Circumcision and Presentation; of Expectation and, perhaps, Annunciation BVM; and of Nativity and Conception of the Baptist (cf. Thurston in Amer. Eccl. Rev. December 1898). Till the tenth century Christmas counted, in papal reckoning, as the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, as it still does in Bulls; Boniface VIII (1294-1303) restored temporarily this usage, to which Germany held longest.

Popular merry-making

Codex Theod. II 8 27 (cf. XV 5 5) forbids, in 425, circus games on 25 December; though not till Codex Just. III 12, 6 (529) is cessation of work imposed. The Second Council of Tours (can. xi xvii) proclaims, in 566 or 567, the sanctity of the "twelve days" from Christmas to Epiphany, and the duty of Advent fast; that of Agde (506), in canons 63-64, orders a universal communion, and that of Braga (563) forbids fasting on Christmas Day. Popular merry-making, however, so increased that the "Laws of King Cnut", fabricated c.1110, order a fast from Christmas to Epiphany.

The three Masses

The Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries give three Masses to this feast, and these, with a special and sublime martyrology, and dispensation, if necessary, from abstinence, still mark our usage. Though Rome gives three Masses to the Nativity only, Ildefonsus, a Spanish bishop, in 845, alludes to a triple mass on Nativity, Easter, Whitsun, and Transfiguration (PL. CVI 888). These Masses, at midnight, dawn, and in die, were mystically connected with aboriginal, Judaic, and Christian dispensations, or (as by Saint Thomas, Summa Theol. III:83:2) to the triple "birth" of Christ: in Eternity, in Time, and in the Soul. Liturgical colours varied: black, white, red, or (eg. at Narbonne) red, white, violet were used (Durand Rat. Div. Off. VI 13). The Gloria was at first sung only in the first Mass of this day.

The historical origin of this triple Mass is probably as follows (cf. Thurston, in Amer. Eccl. Rev. January 1899; Grisar Anal. Rom. I 595; Geschichte Roms . . . im Mittelalter I 607 397; Civ. Catt. 21 September 1895 etc.): The first Mass, celebrated at the Oratorium Præsepis in Saint Mary Major — a church probably immediately assimilated to the Bethlehem basilica — and the third, at Saint Peter's, reproduced in Rome the double Christmas Office mentioned by Etheria (see above) at Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The second Mass was celebrated by the pope in the "chapel royal" of the Byzantine Court officials on the Palatine, ie. Saint Anastasia's church, originally called, like the basilica at Constantinople, Anastasis, and like it built at first to reproduce the Jerusalem Anastasis basilica — and like it, finally, in abandoning the name "Anastasis" for that of the martyr Saint Anastasia. The second Mass would therefore be a papal compliment to the imperial church on its patronal feast. The three stations are thus accounted for, for by 1143 (cf. Ord. Romani in PL. LXXVIII 1032) the pope abandoned distant Saint Peter's, and said the third Mass at the high altar of Saint Mary Major. At this third Mass Leo II inaugurated, in 800, by the coronation of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire. The day became a favourite for court ceremonies, and on it, e.g., William of Normandy was crowned at Westminster.