(Posted 12-7-99)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News Service Contact: Deborah Durkee, 336-334-5371
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TRADITION OF CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION
SET BY ROMAN EMPEROR CONSTANTINE
By Deborah Durkee
GREENSBORO--Everyone knows the story of Christmas, but not that its date and rituals of celebration stem from the time of Roman Emperor Constantine, who lived from 272-337 A.D.
In Constantine's effort to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, he mapped the Christian festival celebrating the birth of Jesus onto the existing season celebrated in the traditional Roman religion, said Dr. Derek Krueger, an associate professor of religious studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
"In ancient times, the people had been used to celebrating Roman festivals honoring the winter solstice," Krueger said. According to "The Oxford American Prayer Book," most scholars agree that the winter solstice probably influenced the celebration date of Christmas.
"On the Roman calendar, like so many traditional Indo-European calendars, the moment of the solstice was a very important moment when the world, which seems to be dying, starts to come into some kind of rebirth," Krueger said. "And this is a moment that had tremendous drama, particularly for religions that were very closely tied to the agricultural cycle."
Although in present times the winter solstice is celebrated on Dec. 22, according to "Liturgy and Worship," a companion book to the prayer books of the Anglican Communion, the date of Dec. 25 was significant as the winter solstice during ancient times. The date goes back to time immemorial and was celebrated as the birthday of Mithras, the god of light.
"The solstice was celebrated as a time when, after shorter and shorter periods of sunlight each day, the light would start returning," Krueger said. "Theologically, the date of Dec. 25 works for Christianity because Christ's advent is light coming into the world."
According to "Liturgy and Worship," the theory of the writer St. Hippolytus (170-235 A.D.) helped to establish Dec. 25 as the date of Christ's birth celebration. He concluded the Crucifixion took place on March 25 of 29 A.D., 30 years to the day after the Incarnation (Jesus' conception). Therefore, Hippolytus concluded, Christ's birth took place nine months after March 25, or Dec. 25.
Before the establishment of Christianity, ancient people held end-of-year festivals in honor of the harvest by preparing special foods, decorating their homes with greenery, singing and gift- giving. These customs gradually became part of the Christmas celebration.
"On some levels, Christianity baptized established festival practice: Christians celebrated their festivals with singing, liturgies, offerings and common meals," Krueger said. "This was part of the Christmas celebration from the fourth century on."
The sheer numbers ruled by Emperor Constantine assured the establishment of Christianity. "By the beginning of the 4th century A.D., 10 percent of the Roman Empire was Christian, by the end of the century, 50 percent of the empire was Christian," Krueger said.
The festival of Christmas was first instituted in Rome by the year 336 and slowly spread to churches in the East, which had a similar observance in the Feast of the Epiphany.
The Feast of the Epiphany, which by about the year 300 had established itself among the churches in the East, was the festival both of the birth and the baptism of Jesus. It was celebrated on Jan. 5 and 6. According to "Liturgy and Worship," Epiphany reached the West in the second half of the fourth century, and in Rome, Jan. 6 seems to have competed for a while with Dec. 25 as the celebration date of Christ's birth. The problem was solved in the West by making Jan. 6 a commemoration of the visit of the three Kings.
The tradition of the gifts of the three Kings: gold, frankincense and myrrh, are usually understood to be offerings appropriate to Christ, according to the book "Myth and Ritual in Christianity" by Alan W. Watts. For Christ as King, the gold of tribute. For Christ as God, the incense of worship, and for Christ as Sacrificial Victim, myrrh for embalming the body.
The word "Christmas" wasn't used until the 12th century. According to "The Oxford American Prayer Book," it comes from an old English term "cristmasse," which means "Christ's Mass."
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