Day Forty – Christmas is for Church

Even if Professor William Tighe is correct and the Church was re-appropriating the date from the pagans (possible, but there were competing claims), the broader evangelical point made below remains valid.  It even gains additional urgency: the Church needs to redefine the significance of December 25th away from its commercial and secular drift!   – Fr. Anthony

The Development of the Feast of the Nativity
Subdeacon Anthony Perkins (2005; lightly edited in 2013)

Introduction

For Christians, the Nativity of Christ is of primary significance.  It is the celebration of the day the God was born: the day that God bridged the gulf between His Perfection and our perfidy and made our sanctification possible.  We are encouraged to be mindful of the contrast between the simultaneous presence of the All-knowing and All-powerful God, Creator and King of Heaven and Earth; and the helpless infant lying in a lowly cave.  This contrast speaks to just how fallen we have become through our pride and of the tremendous sacrifice God makes for us.  We cannot help but rejoice: 

Heaven and earth are united today, for Christ is born. Today has God come upon earth, and man gone up to heaven.  Today for man’s sake is seen in the flesh He who by nature is invisible.  Therefore let us also give glory and cry aloud to Him: Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, which Thy coming has bestowed upon us, O Saviour: glory to Thee.   (From Nativity Eve Litiya)

But despite the theological necessity of the Feast of the Nativity, it took several centuries for Christians to develop a common date for this celebration.  By the time the Church recognized the need for a common and separate celebration of this awesome event, the actual date of Christ’s birth had been forgotten (although some claimed to have access to the tax rolls that included St. Joseph and the Theotokos).  Several plausible dates were provided, but the Church ultimately decided to baptize prefiguring pagan feast, the Feast of the Eternal Sun.  This essay presents the development of the Fast of the Nativity and its preparatory Pylypivka or Advent fast, and concludes with a discussion of the possible implications of the choice of the date of Christmas for evangelization in our place and time.

Development of Christmas / Nativity 

The Church has always known of human birth of Christ, but it took a while for Tradition to provide a common date for its celebration.  The communal celebration of the Incarnation probably took place in Alexandria among the Gnostics.  Because of their heretical view of the Incarnation- namely that Jesus was endowed with His divine nature as a result of his baptism in the Jordan- these Gnostics celebrated the Incarnation through Theophany rather than the Nativity.  The Alexandrian Church corrected and baptized this feast, incorporating into it the events of the Nativity (to include the actual incarnation and the arrival of the magi).  Very few theologians were willing to make the claim that Jesus Christ was actually baptized- much less born- on the 6^th of January.   The date of January 6^th was probably chosen for the Theophany in order to rectify the pagan celebration of Aion, the Roman god of time and eternity.  This festival would have been an attractive setting for the Theophany feast: one of its ceremonies involved taking and storing water from the Nile.  Theophany became a fixed part of the liturgical cycle in the East, then made its way to the West.  

When the Fathers desired to separate the celebrations of the Nativity and Theophany, there was no single date that they could point to for its celebration.  While there are historical records and logical/theological proofs that support the choice of December 25^th as the actual date of the Nativity, the date of December 25^th was probably chosen because of the popularity of the Roman festival celebrating the “Birth of the Invincible Sun”.  Some even argue that this was the motivation for the Western Church’s establishment of the Nativity Feast.  It is not hard to see how Christ could be considered the true archetype of “the Invincible Sun”: the imagery of light found in the writing of St. John, prophecies found in the Old Testament (e.g. Malachi), and Orthodox hymnography all point to this connection.  The following hymns show the conscious and deliberate development of these parallel themes:    

Your Nativity, O Christ our God,
Has shown to the world the light of wisdom
For by it hose who worshipped the stars
Were taught be a star to adore You,
The Sun of Righteousness,
And to know You, the Orient from on high.
O Lord, glory to You!

The Magi who had been led on their way by a divine star
Stood before You in wonder at your marvelous birth;
And bearing gifts, they see the Sun
Who rose from the virgin cloud.

Let the people who sat in darkness
See shining forth the Light that knows no evening,
Him whom the star once manifested
To the fire-worshipping Persian kings.

You have shone forth a Virgin,
O Spiritual Sun of Rightousness,
And a star revealed You,
Whom nothing can contain,
Contained with a cave.
You have led the Magi to worship You,
And joining with them we magnify You.
O Giver of Life, glory to You.

Our Savior, the Dayspring from the East,
Has visited us from on high;
And we who were in darkness and shadow
Have found the Truth.
For the Lord is born of a Virgin!
               (from various services, taken from Hopko; 120-121)

Despite its obvious utility, the Church’s use of “The Nativity of the Invincible Sun” elicits cries of consternation from two audiences.  The first, currently represented by Adventist Christians, believe that the connection is blasphemous and desecrates Christ.  The second, advocated by neo-pagans and atheists but increasingly becoming  part of the secular Western mind, argues that it is proof of both Christianity’s imperialism and falseness.  The former charge (of imperialism) has some merit: Orthodox Christians do believe that all things must either be sanctified through Christ or abandoned/destroyed.  The latter charge shows the poverty of religious pluralism.  Our post-Christian culture encourages people to believe that religions resemble one another because they are all more or less true.  Accepting the profound ontological reality of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, Christians believe that other religions and religious practices resemble Orthodox worship because they are imperfect reflections, shadows, or ripples of Orthodox reality.

Once the Feast of the Nativity had been established in the West, it was gradually incorporated in the East.  Sources are not clear on why the Eastern churches decided to separate the celebration of the Nativity from that of the Theophany.  A couple of explanations come to mind.  The first is that the Eastern churches needed to counteract the “Nativity of the Invincible Sun.”  After all, it had become the official feast of the Roman Empire in 274.  The second is that the Fathers may have used the development of the Nativity to counter Arianism and the non-Chalcedonians.  As described above, the Feast of the Nativity encourages participants to contemplate the simultaneous and mysterious juxtaposition of Christ’s human and divine natures.  Through their sermons and guidance, three of Orthodoxy’s greatest Fathers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, helped establish this feast in the East.  As St. John Chrysostom points out, the fact that the Feast spread through the Orthodox Church so quickly speaks to its Liturgical authenticity.  It is interesting that the Western and Eastern celebrations maintained their unique features: in the East the celebration of the Magi moved along with the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ remained the center of the Theophany, whereas in the West the Nativity moved alone, making Epiphany a celebration of the arrival of the Magi, Christ’s Baptism, and the Wedding at Cana.

Development of Advent and Pylypivka

Another difference that developed between the celebration of the Feast in the East and West involves the manner of preparation.  In the West, the Fast of the Nativity was established in Gaul in the fifth century.  By the end of that century St. Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, began his Nativity Fast on St. Martin’s day (11 November).  Because Saturdays and Sundays were Fast-free, this created a fast of 40 days.  In 567 The Second Council of Tours decreed that monks should begin their Nativity Fast on the 1^st of December.  In part, this fast developed to prepare for Epiphany which, like Pascha, was a traditional day for Baptisms (Christ Himself fasted for 40 days before His Baptism).  By the end of the 6^th Century Advent, as the Nativity Fast is called in the West, was well established; although its length and severity still changed from time to time.  In the East the Nativity Fast took longer to develop, but by the end of the 6^th Century John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, speaks of “the Fast of St. Philip.”  There were two reasons for fixing the beginning of the Nativity Fast on St. Philip’s day.  The first- and most obvious- is that it is 40 days from St. Philip’s Day to the Nativity.  The second is less obvious.   According to tradition, St. Philip was punished for his antipathy towards his torturers and executioners and forced to wait 40 days after his death to enter Heaven.  He begged the apostles to pray for him during this time, and the apostles went on to prescribe a 40 day feast for the faithful.  The Council of Constantinople in 1166 finally made St. Philip’s Day the official starting date for the Nativity Fast.  For this reason, the Nativity Fast is called the “St. Philip’s Fast” or, in Ukraine, the Pylypivka.

Conclusion: Implications for Contemporary Evangelism

One of the most interesting issues raised in the development of the Nativity Feast involves the decision to use the date of the pagan festival for the  “Nativity of the Invincible Sun.”  The logic, described above, is that 1) the “Nativity of the Invincible Sun” is a sort of pagan approximation of the Nativity of the Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and 2) the Baptism of this pagan celebration would protect Christians from the popular- but entirely blasphemous- worship of the sun.  Our Tradition is full of examples like this where the Fathers chose to teach people about Christ in their own language by perfecting their own culture.  This leads me to a final bit of irony involving the development of Orthodox Tradition in this country.  The contemporary natives of America have a feast that is even more similar to our Feast of the Nativity than was the Roman “Nativity of the Invincible Sun.”  They call it “Christmas” and they celebrate it 13 days earlier than most Orthodox celebrate the Nativity.  On this day they worship the Incarnation through birth of their Lord Jesus Christ- just like we do at the Nativity.  Their worship is not perfect- it is too commercial and selfish, and many of our brothers and sisters are tempted by its idolatry.   But when Orthodox parishes Baptize this feast (e.g. by switching to the Revised Julian calendar or “celebrating the Nativity twice”), they are derided for accommodation.  There are strong arguments in favor of keeping the (unrevised) Julian calendar, but Tradition provides at least one reason for its modification (or at least economia for a pre-Feast).

Bibliography

• Adam, Adolf. 1990. The Liturgical Year. Liturgical Press: Collegeville MN
• Hopko, Thomas Fr. 1997. The Winter Pascha. St. Vladimir’s Seminary; Crestwood, NY
• Katrij, Julian J. 1983. A Byzantine Rite Liturgical Year. translated by Fr. Demetrius E. Wysochansky. Basilian Fathers Publication; New York.
• Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (trans.). 1998. The Festal Menaion.  St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press; South Canaan, PA
•  “Advent” and “Christmas” from the Catholic Encyclopedia. (on-line)