And when it comes it brings good cheer.
Ask any ordinary Christian why he commemorates the twenty-fifth of December, »nd he will tell you he does so because it is the birthday of Jesus Christ. Ask him how he knows that, and he will answer "Of course it is," or "Everybody says so," or some other form of words which is an excuse for ignorance. He does not know that there is not the slightest evidence that Jesus Christ was born on the twenty-fifth of December, nor is he aware that this very day was commemorated by Pagans for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years before the days of Prophet of Nazareth.
The New Testament is silent on this point. But it relates one incident which contradicts the popular belief. It tells us that at the birth of Christ the angels sang a song which was heard by shepherds who were watching their flocks by night. Now it is an indisputable fact that Palestine is too cold in midwinter for sheep to lie out on their pastures. It is obvious, therefore, that if the flocks were out at night when Christ was born, the event must have happened in a milder season of the year. This is overlooked by the generality of Christians, who read the Bible, when they do read it, with wonderful carelessness.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, does not appear to have mentioned his birthday, nor did his brothers and sisters. Perhaps they forgot it, having no Family Bible to refresh their memories, and no registrar's office to consult. The primitive Church knew nothing about it. According to the learned and trustworthy Bingham (Antiquities, bk. xx, ch. iv) various sects celebrated the birthday of Christ at different times. The Basilidians kept the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of April, others the twenty-fifth of May, and the greatest part of the Eastern Church the sixth of January. The Latin Church always kept the twenty-fifth of December, but this date was not fixed until the second half of the fourth century. Preaching at Antioch, about A. D. 880, St. Chrysostom declared "It is not yet ten years since this day was made known to us (Massey, Natural Genesis, vol. ii, p. 403). This is perfectly conclusive. Not until Jesus Christ had been dead for more than three hundred years was his birthday discovered; in other words, it was not till then that the Church fixed the date with an eye to its own profit.
St. Chrysostom does indeed allege that "Among those inhabiting the West, it was known before from ancient and primitive times, and to the dwellers from Thrace to Cadiz it was previously familiar and well known." But this is absolute fudge. Is it likely, is it conceivable, that the birthday of Christ should be known in the West, far away from Palestine, and unknown close to it at Antioch, where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians?
The real explanation of the case is very simple. "Some also think," says Bingham, "that the very design of appointing the feast of Christ's Nativity and Epiphany at this season of the year, was chiefly to oppose the vanities and excesses which the heathen indulged themselves in, upon their Saturnalia and calends of January at this very time of the year." Precisely so. After the adoption of Christianity by Constantine the Church became rapidly Paganised. It adopted all sorts of heathen rites and festivals; in short, it stooped to conquer. Now, this very twenty-fifth of December was a Pagan festival; it was adopted by the Church with simply the alteration of the name; and in order to make the most of the transaction, the Church repeatedly censured those who tried to make the day a fast instead of a festival. A variety of pious reasons were assigned, but behind them all was the real reason, that only by keeping the day as a festival could the Church wean the Pagans from their old faith. It is always easier to change popular doctrines than popular observances, and the Church's policy was to make as little alteration as possible in heathen customs while entirely changing their religious significance.
Why was the twenty-fifth of December a universal Pagan festival? Why was it celebrated from the frozen North to the sultry South, and from Gaul in the West, to Syria, Persia, and India in the East? Because it was the birthday of the SUN. On the twenty-first of December—which, curiously enough, the Church has fixed as the day of St. Thomas, who doubted the resurrection of Christ—the sun reaches its nadir. The God of Day enters into his winter cave. For three days there is stagnation. Is he really shorn of strength? Has the enemy triumphed over him for ever? Will he never more assert his might, and rise, conquering, and to conquer, in the heavens? Will the earth for ever lie in the sterile embrace of cold and darkness? Will the sweet, soft grass no more spring from the soil? Will the blackened tree-branches no more burst forth with fresh green life? Will the corn no more wave in the summer breeze? Will the vines no more bear their purple clusters of prisoned nectar? Is it hope or despair? Hope! See the three full days are ended. The twenty-fifth of December has come. The sun begins to rise, faint and pale, from what appeared his tomb. Doubt is no longer possible. The pangs of rebirth are past. His strength is returning, though as yet he is weak as a suckling child. Evohe! Eat and drink, sing and dance; and let the temples, the altars, the houses, be decorated with evergreen and misletoe, typifying the perennial life of things, and suggesting the buds of spring midst winter's snows.
All the Sun-Gods, including Jesus Christ, were born on this blessed day. It is not the Son's birthday, but the Sun's; the visible, beneficent, everfighting, ever-victorious God, whom the old heathen worshipped. And they were wise—wiser at least than the "spiritualised" and emasculated Christians. "Sir," said an Aberdeen lady to a Persian ambassador, "they tell me you worship the sun!" "Ah, madam," he replied, "and so would you, if you had ever seen him,"
The Puritans who, with all thoir sour bigotry, had much learning, saw the Pagan origin of Christmas, and the day is still disregarded by puritan Scotland. Br. Thomas Warmatry wrote in 1648, "It doth appear that the time of this Festival doth comply with the time of the Heathen's Saturnalia." Prynne, ear-cropped Prynne, in his Histrio-Mastix, lets out in fine style—
"If we compare our Bacchanalian Christmases and New Year's Tides with these Saturnalia and Feasts of Janus, we shall find such near affinity between them both in regard of time (they being both in the end of December and the first of January) and in their manner of solemnising (both of them being spent in revelling, epicurism, wantonness, idleness, dancing, drinking, stage plays, masques, and carnal pomp and jollity), that we must needs conclude the one to be but the very ape or issue of the other. Hence Polydor Virgil affirms in express terms that our Christmas Lords of Misrule (which cut torn, saith he, is chiefly observed in England), together with dancing, masques, mummeries, stage plays, and such other Christmas disorders now in use with Christians, were derived from those Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian Festivals; which (concludes he) should cause all pious Christians externally to abominate them."
And the Puritans did abominate them. Brand tells us (Popular Antiquities, Christmas) that on December 22, 1647, the town-crier of Canterbury, by order of the mayor, openly proclaimed that all such "superstitious festivals" should be put down, and that "a market should be kept upon Christmas Day." There is an Order of Parliament dated December 24, 1652, directing "that no observation shall be had of the five and twentieth day of December, commonly called Christmas Day; nor any solemnity used or exercised in Churches upon that day in respect thereof."
It must, indeed, strike any reflective Christian as peculiar that the birthday of his Savior should be celebrated with social festivities. What has roast beef to do with original sin, plum-pudding with the atonement, or whiskey with salvation by faith? What relation is there between carnal enjoyments and a spiritual faith? Why are wordly pleasures the commemoratives of the central doctrine of the Religion of Sorrow? Why, in brief, is Christmas a festival at all?
The answer to this question has been given already. The practices of a religion of life naturally differ from those of a religion of death. It was appropriate to worship the sun with feast and mirth, for he was the great gladdener and sustainer, giving food to the hungry and joy to the dejected. Regarded in this light, our Christmas customs are seen to have had a natural origin. Every detail is borrowed from ancient sun-worship. Christians are still Pagans without it, and, paradoxical as it sounds, Christmas existed before Christ. The celebration is of immemorial antiquity, though its name and nominal object have changed. It preceded Christianity, and will probably survive it.
No comments:
Post a Comment