a festival called the Amburbium, which took place at the beginning of February and consisted of a procession around the city of Rome with lighted candles to purify it. Candles or other lights were also placed in graves with dead bodies, the thought being that they would have light in the next world! This was displaced by Pope Liberius in the fourth century with Candlemas. Candles were blessed in church and then taken on procession as a symbol of Christ as a light to lighten the Gentiles. As with all of these “Christian” holy days concocted by the papacy, with the passage of time there was assimilation with the pagan myths and practices which the church festivals were intended to displace.
It was commonplace in some areas to remove the winter evergreens such as holly and ivy on Candlemas Eve, replacing them with spring plants such as snowdrops. Miraculous powers came to be associated with the candles, so that they would be lit and kept burning during times of storms or illnesses or at a death. Candlemas was believed by some to be the lighting of a partially burned stick from the Yule log of Christmas, therefore considered to be the last farewell to Christmas. Linked with this was Mary’s forty days of purification after she gave birth (Lev. 12:1–8) before she could offer a sacrifice in the Temple in Jerusalem, therefore with the assumption that the Lord was born on December 25, forty days later brings us to February 2–3 (Candlemas).
When it came to Christianising the pagan festivals, the church encountered a particular problem with New Year and the varied forms of paganism which evolved from the Romans Kalends celebrations. Their attempts to change it proved less successful, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter on New Year. The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern carolling), etc. We conclude this section with a quote from an American historian. Stephen Nissenbaum, history professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, writes,
In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.16
1. Haldane, Reasons of a Change, 50–51.
2. Goldsmith, History of Rome, 42.
3. Minucius Felix, Octavius, ch. 25.
4. Bannerman, Church of Christ, 1:414.
5. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 3:396.
6. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mithraism.
7. Miles, Christmas, 23.
8. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 3:380, n. 1, quoting Codex Justinianus.
9. Bauckham,“Sabbath and Sunday,” 302–7.
10. www.bookofconcord.org, Art. 28; Calvin, Selected Works, 2:157–63.
11. Journal of Calendar Reform, 23:128n.
12. Weigall, Paganism, 231.
13. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 1:30.
14. Grant, Collapse and Recovery, 51.
15. Dyer, British Popular Customs, 396.
16. Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas, 4.
Down the Centuries
T. K. Cheyne’s Encyclopædia Biblica cites a famous learned Jesuit—A.Lupi—declaring in 1785 that there is not a single month in the year to which the Nativity has not been assigned by some writer or other.17 This ought to remind us of the great ambiguity in establishing Christ’s birth, an ambiguity purposed by God in his providential sovereignty.
The first date connected with the birth of the Lord Jesus, was not December 25 but January 6. The origin of this Epiphany festival is very obscure, neither can we say with certainty what its meaning was at first, the date probably having a pagan origin in connection with the birth of the world (the Egyptians celebrating the winter solstice on this date since 2000 BC). The Alexandrian Gnostic heretic—Basilides—teaching between 117 and 138 AD, and his followers, appear to be the first in the church to link this date with the Lord’s birthday. Epiphany had come to be regarded as referring to two different events: the appearance of the wise men to worship Jesus and his appearance to be baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, although it also alluded to his birth/nativity. (In the Greek Church to this day, Epiphany remains of greater significance than Christmas, and in the Armenian Church, December 25 is not recognized at all.)
Respecting the early church fathers, Irenaeus (130–202) from Polycarp’s hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor, Origen (184–254) from Alexandria in Egypt, and Tertullian (160–225) from Carthage, modern Tunisia, do not include Christmas or Epiphany, or their dates on their lists of feasts and celebrations (although Origen’s teacher—Clement of Alexandria (d. 215)—recorded that some Christians believed Jesus to have been born in April). Tertullian (dogmatic in his belief that Christ had been crucified on March 25, a date also believed by some to be the sixth day of Creation when Adam was made) rebuked Christians for partaking in pagan festivals.
Writing probably between 200 and 210, he states, “The Saturnalia, the feasts of January, the Brumalia and Matronalia, are now frequented; gifts are carried to and fro, new year’s day presents are made with din and sports, and banquets are celebrated with uproar.”18 We do not know if those referred to were believers brought up as Christians or those who had more recently come into the church. In any event, they obviously were still attached to the prevailing festivals of paganism in their society. (Brumalia was the month-long pagan feast centered upon crop sowing that immediately preceded Saturnalia; Matronalia at the beginning of March, celebrated the goddess of childbirth.)
Origen, who spent the last twenty-five years of his life in Palestine, writing around 248, laments that in spite of Paul’s criticism of believers in Galatia and elsewhere observing Jewish festal days, Christians were still “observing” different days such as Preparation, Passover, and Pentecost. There is, however, no mention of pagan days and Origen makes it clear that the most important day to be observed is the Lord’s Day.19 Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160–240) was a Christian traveller and historian who wrote Chronographiai in 221, popularizing the belief that Christ was conceived on March 25 and therefore born on December 25. In coming decades this led some in the church to desire the recognition and celebration of December 25 as Christ’s birthday, something that Origen emphatically denounced in 245, not on the basis of the date chosen
