Some Little Known Facts
about Christmas
While many people assume that the dating of Christmas was based on the pagan celebration of Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun), the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th predates that celebration by over a century. The
Birth of Christ has been celebrated by the Catholic (Universal) Christian
Church since the early days of Christianity. The tradition may date back to the
Virgin Mary, who remained with the Apostles after her Son’s death. His mother
would have remembered when Jesus was born and surely shared the story of His
birth, which would later be included in Luke and Matthew’s Gospels. The dating
of the Christmas celebration is also confirmed by written evidence as far back
as 204 AD, as Jon
Sorensen writes in his article Why December 25th? on Catholic.com:
“Although the date of Christ’s
birth is not given to us in Scripture, there is documented evidence that
December 25 was already of some significance to Christians prior to A.D. 354
[this is when the celebration of Sol Invictus began]. One example can be found
in the writings of Hyppolytus of Rome, who explains in his Commentary on
the book of Daniel (c. A.D. 204) that the Lord’s birth was believed to
have occurred on that day:
For the first advent of our Lord in the
flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while
Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five
hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the
eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.
The reference
to Adam can be understood in light of another of Hyppolytus’ writings, the Chronicon,
where he explains that Jesus was born nine months after the anniversary of
Creation. According to his calculations, the world was created on the vernal
equinox, March 25, which would mean Jesus was born nine months later, on
December 25.
Nineteenth-century
liturgical scholar Louis Duchesne explains that “towards the end of the third
century the custom of celebrating the birthday of Christ had spread throughout
the whole Church, but that it was not observed everywhere on the same day” (Christian
Worship, Its Origin and Evolution: a study of the Latin liturgy up to the time of
Charlemagne, p. 260). ”
The Date of Christmas, East
and West
Because
some of the Eastern Churches continued to follow the Julian calendar after the
rest of the Catholic Church adopted the more accurate Gregorian calendar,
Christmas is celebrated on different dates in the East and the West. Some
Eastern Orthodox Christians still celebrate Christmas on January 6th
or 7th.
In
the west, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6th. In several
countries, gifts are given on the Feast of Epiphany, which is the commemoration
of the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child – the “three kings” who came from
afar, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. These gifts are symbolic
of the role of Christ: the gold for His kingship; the frankincense for His
priesthood; and the myrrh for His burial.
The Real Santa Claus
The
name Santa Claus comes from the Norwegian “Sinter Claus” which means St.
Nicholas. Nicholas was the bishop of Myra (now Turkey) in the 4th
Century. One story told about Nicholas is that, upon learning that a poor
family was about to sell its three daughters into slavery for lack of a
marriage dowry, he secretly placed bags of gold through a window for the family
to discover and use for a dowry. He has been named the patron saint of
children. His feast is celebrated on December 6th. The tradition of
secret gift-giving by St. Nicholas was later incorporated into the celebration
of Christmas.
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