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. It
was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same twenty-fifth of
December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in
token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the
Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the
Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival,
they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be
solemnised on that day and the festival of the Epiphany on the sixth
of January. Accordingly, along with this custom, the practice has
prevailed of kindling fires till the sixth." The heathen origin of
Christmas is plainly hinted at, if not tacitly admitted, by
Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not to celebrate
that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on
account of him who made the sun. In like manner Leo the Great
rebuked the pestilent belief that Christmas was solemnised because
of the birth of the new sun, as it was called, and not because of
the nativity of Christ.
Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness. If that was so, there can be no intrinsic improbability in the conjecture that motives of the same sort may have led the ecclesiastical authorities to assimilate the Easter festival of the death and resurrection of their Lord to the festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic god which fell at the same season. Now the Easter rites still observed in Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy bear in some respects a striking resemblance to the rites of Adonis, and I have suggested that the Church may have consciously adapted the new festival to its heathen predecessor for the sake of winning souls to Christ. But this adaptation probably took place in the Greek-speaking rather than in the Latin-speaking parts of the ancient world; for the worship of Adonis, while it flourished among the Greeks, appears to have made little impression on Rome and the West. Certainly it never formed part of the official Roman religion. The place which it might have taken in the affections of the vulgar was already occupied by the similar but more barbarous worship of Attis and the Great Mother. Now the death and resurrection of Attis were officially celebrated at Rome on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of March, the latter being regarded as the spring equinox, and therefore as the most appropriate day for the revival of a god of vegetation who had been dead or sleeping throughout the winter. But according to an ancient and widespread tradition Christ suffered on the twenty-fifth of March, and accordingly some Christians regularly celebrated the Crucifixion on that day without any regard to the state of the moon. This custom was certainly observed in
