With Epiphany celebrated on the 6th of January, as observed at the conclusion of the last chapter, was united the festival of the birth of Christ (Christmas), at the time we first hear of it; that is, in Egypt. The first traces of it are obscure in the extreme. Clement of Alexandria, a learned Father of the Church, whom nothing seemingly escaped, and who flourished at the beginning of the third century, does not expressly mention it. His testimony, however, is important, as showing the ignorance of Christians of that period, even the best informed of them, of the time of Christ's birth. Both the day and the year were involved in uncertainty; and Clement seems to speak with no little contempt of those who undertook to fix the former. "There are those," he says, "who, with an over-busy curiosity, attempt to fix, not only the year, but the day, of our Saviour's birth; who, they say, was born in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, on the twenty-fifth of the month Pachon"; that is, the twentieth of May. He adds soon after, "Some say that he was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of the month Pharmuthi"; that is, the nineteenth or twentieth day of April; both parties selecting the spring as the season of the nativity. [Strom., lib. i. c. 21, pp. 407,408, ed. Oxon. 1715. It has been inferred, however, from a statement made by Clement relating to the interval between the birth of Christ and the death of Commodus, that he himself supposed the day of the nativity to have been the 18th of November.] And here Clement leaves the matter. The inference is plain. The day of the nativity was unknown. Whatever notice was taken of the event, was taken at the festival of the Baptism. A few, prying into the subject with vain solicitude, pretended to assign the day: but they differed; only agreeing that it was in April or May. In regard to the precise year of the Saviour's birth, our common or vulgar era, by the general consent of the learned, places it from three to five years (four is generally assigned) too late.
At the period when we discover the first trace of Christmas, it was thus celebrated on the 6th of January, having been superadded to the feast of the Baptism. About the middle of the fourth century, we hear of its celebration at Rome on the 25th of December; the day being determined, it is asserted, — though not on evidence which is perfectly conclusive, — by Julius, Bishop of Rome. This, we believe, is the earliest notice of it as a distinct festival; certainly the earliest which is clear and undisputed. It was soon after introduced into the East; where, according to the testimony of Chrysostom, who was Priest of Antioch, and afterwards Bishop of Constantinople, it was before unknown. "It is not yet ten years," says he, in his Homily on the Nativity, about the year 386, "since this day was first made known to us. It had been before observed," he adds, "in the West; whence the knowledge of it was derived." It is clear, from this testimony, that the present time of celebrating the birth of the Saviour was a novelty in the East very late in the fourth century; and, from the manner in which Chrysostom expresses himself, the conclusion seems irresistible, that, before that time, there was no festival of the kind observed in the Syrian Church. He does not allude to any. He does not say that the question was about the day merely; as he naturally would have said, if it had been so. "Some affirmed," he says, "and others denied, that the festival was an old one, known from Thrace to Spain." "There was much disputing," he adds, "on the subject, and much opposition was encountered in the introduction of the festival." [On the subject of the use which has been made of ChrysOatom's reasoning, and the fallacies involved in the argument employed to show that the real date of the Saviour's birth was known in his day, see a notice of Dr. Jarvis's "Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church," in the Christian Examiner, fourth series, vol. iii. pp. 412-414.] This, it must be recollected, was in one of the chief cities in the East, near the end of the fourth century. The Christians of Egypt, at a much later period, are found celebrating the nativity on the old 6th of January. [It is a circumstance worthy of note, that, while the festival of the Baptism extended itself from East to West, that of Christmas travelled from West to East. We have not overlooked the testimony of Augustine, at the end of the fourth century : but he is too late a writer to be an authority for any early tradition; and, though he mentions the festival of the Nativity, he does not ascribe to it the same importance as to the two older festivals of Easter and Whitsunday.]
Various reasons have been assigned for the selection of the 25th day of December by the Romans. It was clearly an innovation. The day had never been observed as a festival of the nativity by Christians of the East, where Christ had his birth. It is certain, however, that some of the most memorable of the Heathen festivals were celebrated at Rome at this season of the year; and these the Christians were fond of attending, and could be the more readily withdrawn from them if they had similar feasts of their own occurring at the same season. It is certain, too, that many of the ceremonies and observances of the Pagan festivals were transferred to those of Christians. [Thus, during the Roman Saturnalia, or feast of Saturn, holden in memory of the golden age of equality and innocence under his reign, and kept in the time of the Caesars from the 17th to the 23d of December (seven days), "all orders were devoted to mirth and feasting"; friends sent presents to each other; slaves enjoyed their liberty, and wore "caps as badges of freedom"; wax tapers were lighted in the temples; and jests and freedom, and all sorts of jollity, prevailed.] Whether this, and much else connected with the establishment of Christian festivals, happened by design or accident, is a point we shall not stop formally to discuss. It has been argued, that the winter solstice (the 25th of December in the Roman calendar) was chosen from a beautiful analogy, — the sun, which then begins to return to diffuse warmth and light over the material creation, presenting a fit emblem of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness to cheer and bless the world by his beams. The festival of the birth of the Sun (natalis Solis invicti), — a figurative expression, denoting his turning at the tropic, — one of the most celebrated festivals among the Romans, observed at this period, had probably as much to do in determining the time of the Christian festival as the bare analogy alluded to; which, however, served well for rhetorical and poetic illustration. We find the Christian poet, Prudentius, soon after making use of it for this purpose. The fixing of the birth of the Saviour at the winter solstice, when the days begin to increase, which would place that of John at the summer solstice, when they begin to decrease, also gratified the love of a mystical interpretation of the language of Scripture. It gave, as it was discovered, to the affirmation, "He must increase, but I must decrease," a deep-hidden meaning. In the absence of evidence, however, we will not undertake to affirm for what reasons the Romans adopted the 25th of December as the day of the festival of the Nativity.
The sum of the whole is, that, besides the weekly festival of Sunday, there are two annual festivals (those of the Resurrection of Christ and the Descent of the Spirit, or Easter and Whitsunday), or rather one festival of fifty days, including both, which dates back to an indefinitely remote period of Christian antiquity; that the festival of the Baptism of Jesus came next, and, last, that of his Nativity; that this last was wholly unknown for some centuries after the apostolic age; that it is not alluded to by any very ancient Christian writer, by Justin Martyr or Tertullian; that it was unknown to the learned Origen, near the middle of the third century; that Clement of Alexandria does not mention the festival, and speaks of the vain labor of some antiquaries who attempted to fix the date of the Saviour's birth, who agreed in nothing except in placing it in the spring months of April or May; that the festival was first celebrated in January, in connection with the festival of the Manifestation; that Chrysostom, who represents the opinions of the Oriental Church, was ignorant, if not of the festival itself, yet certainly of the present period of its celebration, near the end of the fourth century; and, finally, that the festival came from the West, and not, like all the more ancient festivals, from the East.
The true explanation of the origin of both the more ancient festivals (Easter and Whitsunday) is, that they were Jewish feasts, — continued among the Jewish Christians, and afterwards, it is impossible to say when, adopted by the Gentile believers; Christ having consecrated them anew, the one by his death and resurrection, and the other by the outpouring of the Spirit upon the Apostles. Neither of them was instituted by Christians; neither of them originated in purely Christian ideas, as is shown by the testimony of Origen, already referred to, and in confirmation of which we might adduce a multitude of passages from the early Christian writers to the same point. But there was in existence among the Jews no festival on which Christmas could be ingrafted; and this, and the fact that it was not customary in the early ages to celebrate the birthdays, but only the deaths, of distinguished individuals, accounts for its late origin. The "Natalia" of the martyrs were kept on the anniversary of their death, — their birth into an immortal existence.
We have no complaint to make of the selection of the 25th of December, as the day for commemorating the birth of the Saviour. It is as good as any other day; it being understood, as we suppose it is, by every one even moderately acquainted with the writings of Christian antiquity, that the true date of the nativity is irrecoverably lost. ["I do not believe," says Beausobre (t. ii. p. 692), "that the evangelists themselves knew it. It is evident that St. Luke, who tells us that he began to be about thirty years of aye, when he was baptized, did not know his precise age."] For ourselves, we like this festival of Christmas, and would let it stand where it is, and where it has stood ever since the days of Chrysostom at least, — a period of more than fourteen centuries. It matters not in the least that we are ignorant of the real date of the Saviour's birth. We can be just as grateful for his appearance in the world as we could be, did we know the precise day or moment of his entrance into it. Of what consequence is it for us to know the particular day, or even the year, when this light first shone upon the earth, since we know that it has arisen, and we enjoy its lustre and warmth? Of just as little consequence, for all practical purposes, as for the voyager on one of our majestic rivers to be informed of the exact spot in the remote wilds on which the stream takes its rise, since his little bark is borne gayly on by its friendly waters; or for any of us, if our affairs have been long prosperous, to be able to tell how or when, to the fraction of a minute, our prosperity commenced. If we have been in adversity, and light has broken in upon our gloom, and continues to shine upon us, it imports little whether or not we can fix on the exact point of time at which the clouds began to break and scatter. Just so with this Star of Bethlehem, which "shines o'er sin and sorrow's night": the exact moment at which its beams began to be visible over the hills and valleys of Judea is not a subject about which we need perplex ourselves. No royal historiographer was present to chronicle the Saviour's birth; yet, if his spirit be in our hearts, we can, if we approve the observance, commemorate his advent, with all the kindlings of devout affection and gratitude, — at our homes, or in our houses of worship, where we have so often met to seek comfort and strength from his words, — on any day which the piety of past ages has set apart for so holy a purpose.
One further remark we would make. We see, in the order in which the festivals arose, important testimony to the truth of Christian history. It could hardly have been different, the facts being supposed true. Christmas could not have preceded in its origin the other festivals founded on the events of the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, without which there could have been no spiritual Christianity. It must almost of necessity follow them, and grow up from obscure beginnings, as it did, out of the gratitude and love of Christians, making it difficult to trace its origin. All this, we say, was natural, and confirms the truth of Christian history. Reading the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul, one would have been surprised to find a festival of the birth of Christ existing from the first. But we are not surprised at finding that the resurrection (without which, according to the Apostle, his preaching and the faith of Christians would be vain) and the descent of the Spirit (which was, in truth, the beginning of spiritual Christianity) were both early celebrated, as we know they were. It was Christ risen and glorified of which these old believers chiefly thought,—the Redeemer from sin, the Leader in the way of immortality, sitting at the right hand of God, — not the infant Christ.
With respect to the uncertainty of the date of Jesus's birth, Dr, Milman, Dean of St. Paul's, London, thus expresses himself: "The year in which Christ was born is still contested. There is still more uncertainty concerning the time of the year, which learned men are still laboring to determine. Where there is and can be no certainty, it is the wisest course to acknowledge our ignorance, and not to claim the authority of historic truth for that which is purely conjectural. The two ablest modern writers who have investigated the chronology of the life of Christ — Dr. Burton and Mr. Greswell — have come to opposite conclusions: one contending for the spring, the other for the autumn. Even if the argument of either had any solid ground to rest on, it would be difficult
(would it be worth while?) to extirpate the traditionary belief so beautifully embodied in Milton's hymn: —
'It was the winter wild
When the Heaven-born child,' &c.
Were the point of the least importance, we should, no doubt, have known more about it."
The reflection of the learned Dean is judicious. The day and the year, as before said, matter not. We are not so much Christians of the "letter" as to think them of any importance. Let them not be contended about. Let Christmas stand, where it has so long stood, to be observed in honor of the "Heaven-born child." As intelligent Christians, however, it is well to know the "historic truth," and not put certainty for uncertainty in a matter of this sort.
There is no Trinitarianism connected with any of the ancient festivals. Nothing could be further removed from Trinitarianism than the simple ideas on which the Easter festival was founded, — "dead, buried, and, the third day, rose again." "The Logos doctrine" (introduced by the learned converts who came fresh from their Heathen studies), associated in thought with the death and resurrection of Jesus, evidently occasioned some embarrassment in the minds of the Fathers who received it; believing, as they generally did for a long time, that the whole Christ suffered. The simple faith of the early believers was not attended with any difficulties of this sort.
The effusion of the Spirit, or the "pouring it out," as the very terms exclude personality, is not a Trinitarian idea; and the observance of the festival of Pentecost, therefore, in early times, affords no evidence of the Trinitarianism of those times, but was quite compatible with the opinion which Gregory Nazianzen, late in the fourth century, says was entertained by some in his day, — that the Spirit was simply "a mode of divine operation"; some others calling it "God himself"; some, "a creature of God"; and some not knowing what to believe on the subject. It made no difference, so far as the celebration of this festival was concerned, which of these views prevailed.
As to Christmas, — the birth-festival, — that, no more than the festival of the Resurrection or the festival of the Spirit, recognizes a Trinity. It would be difficult to extract the Trinity from the angelic song, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men." We may, therefore, add these three festivals — two of them earlier, and one later — to the monuments of Christian antiquity already referred to, as bearing no testimony to the ecclesiastical doctrine of the Trinity.
After what has been said in the foregoing pages, we are prepared to re-assert, in conclusion, that the modern doctrine of the Trinity is not found in any document or relic belonging to the Church of the first three centuries. Letters, art, usage, theology, worship, creed, hymn, chant, doxology, ascription, commemorative rite, and festive observance, so far as any remains or any record of them are preserved, coming down from early times, are, as regards this doctrine, an absolute blank. They testify, so far as they testify at all, to the supremacy of the Father, the only true God; and to the inferior and derived nature of the Son. There is nowhere among these remains a co-equal Trinity. The cross is there; Christ is there as the Good Shepherd, the Father's hand placing a crown, or victor's wreath, on his head; but no undivided Three, — co-equal, infinite, self-existent, and eternal. This was a conception to which the age had not arrived. It was of later origin.
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