The Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ's birth,
and accordingly the early Church did not celebrate it. In time,
however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the sixth of January
as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of commemorating the
birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread until by the
fourth century it was universally established in the East. But at
the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century the
Western Church, which had never recognised the sixth of January as
the day of the Nativity, adopted the twenty-fifth of December as the
true date, and in time its decision was accepted also by the Eastern
Church. At Antioch the change was not introduced till about the year
375 A.D.
What considerations led the ecclesiastical authorities to institute
the festival of Christmas? The motives for the innovation are stated
with great frankness by a Syrian writer, himself a Christian. "The
reason," he tells us, "why the fathers transferred the celebration
of the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December was this.
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