DATES CENTURIES AGO

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 52, 30 December 1925, Page 59

DATES CENTURIES AGO

:-i ',' .The custom of celebrating a special day in ; .-;>memory of Christ's nativity is one which dates from the earliest ages of Christianity. ; From primitive times the Eastern Church .; solemnised the birthday of Our Blessed Lord :■:? X on January 6. - Rome, however, with never- ; failing constancy, has always celebrated this ; event on the 25th day of December. Dom •;.i Swithber Baumer, 0.5.8., is of the opinion k; 4&at Christmas must have been instituted in ?: Rome; some time after, the year 243. >-v Hippolytes may be cited as one of the w- earliest authorities in favor of the 25th day -: of December. He lived in Rome during the first half of the third century, and must have v.; had the best opportunities of learning the primitive tradition of the "Mother and Mistress of all Churches." In a recently dis- & ;7 covered commentary of his, on the Book of Daniel, quoted by Mgr. Duchesne, the date ..when Christ was born is set down as the '■;■;'; 25th of December. A Roman calendar of the early part of the fourth century also inscribes the 25th of December as the birthday of Christ.; „ i Pagan Rome also kept the festival on the 25th of December. It was the Nativitas InVv victi (Solis), the birthday of the sun, and pj the suggestion has been made that this inr Influenced the Church in fixing Christmas on

the same day. Be that ,as 'it may, one cannot fail to see a striking parallel between the, day of the winter solstice, when the sun is, as it were, born anew, and the old Sol Justitiae, the sun of justice, who was believed by the Roman Christians to have risen for the first time upon the world on that day. The feast of Christmas then must be regarded as essentially a feast of the Latin Church. Its institution dates from Rome about the end, of the third century. From Rome it found its way into the East.