Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies — Christmas

Of the major Christian Holy Days, Christmas, Easterand Pentecost are the high points in the HistoricChurch Year. On these Holy Days we celebrate God theFather’s gift of His only-begotten Son in the birth of Je-sus Christ, we celebrate God the Son’s gift of His life,sufferings, death and resurrection at Passover/Easter,and we celebrate God the Holy Spirit’s gift of calling usto faith and dwelling in us through Word and Sacra-ment.

These Holy Days are also one of the main fronts in thebattle against Christianity by people who wish to un-dermine Christianity. Part of undermining Christianitymeans undermining all the claims of Christianity about

what the Bible teaches. The historical liturgical practice of the church has been the focalpoint of the application of Biblical doctrine to the faith and lives of the saints. By dis-crediting the liturgical practice of the Church the enemies of Christianity try to distractfrom biblical teaching for that day and discredit that teaching.

This is not to say that these liturgical practices or holiday traditions should be requiredin any legalistic way. This is to point out that the efforts of those who try to discredit theauthenticity of Christian Holy days and seek to scandalize the traditions associated withthose days do so to undermine the biblical doctrine the Church teaches through the ob-servance of these Holy Days.

And so any Christian holy day that could be claimed is claimed by the anti-Christiangroups. We have seen this with Halloween and we will see it with many other lesserHistoric Christian celebrations.

There are two basic types of claims against each Christian Holy Day: The first type ofclaim is that the date itself was stolen from pre-Christian or pagan sources, and the sec-ond type of claim is that the traditions celebrated on that holy day are purported to beof pre-Christian/pagan origin.

So let us start with the date of Christmas celebration. We will look at two early docu-

ments from two Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome. Bothof these wrote around the year 200 AD. They both put the date for the celebration ofChrist’s birth at December 25th in our calendar. Some of the following is a bit technical.I apologize for this. But I think it is necessary for readers to have access to these re-sources and the arguments so they can understand what took place and correct the inac-curacies about when Christmas was first celebrated on December 25th.

When did the earliest Christians date the birth of Christ at December 25th?

In these paragraphs we are not trying to establish when the birth of Christ actually tookplace. We are trying to establish where and when the Church began to associate thebirth of Christ with December 25th or January 6th.

The tradition of celebrating the Nativity of Christ on December 25th or January 6th wasspread all across Europe, Africa, and Asia in the early Church. And the tradition wasconsistent. There was a difference between the Eastern Orthodox Christians and theWestern Christians on which day should be emphasized. Should the Christian Churchprimarily celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th, when His birth was an-nounced to the people of Israel, or on January 6th when the Gentile Wise men, or Magai,visited him. Both days are celebrated in the Eastern and the Western Church. The East-ern Orthodox Church celebrates January 6th as the Baptism of Jesus rather than the visi-tation of the Wise Men. But both days were based on the early Church figuring fromScripture that Jesus was conceived in the Spring of the year at the time of the full moonof Passover.

The early Church emphasized March 25th the Festival of the Annunciation as the Incar-nation of Christ. The old Catholic Encyclopedia is inaccurate in stating:

“The present date of the feast (25 March) depends upon the date of the olderfeast of Christmas.” [Holwek 1907]

The textual evidence from the early Church Fathers indicates the opposite.

In recent times there have been several helpful articles published on this topic. This arti-cle is indebted to Andrew McGowan’s article for Biblical Archaeology Review “HowDecember 25 Became Christmas”, T. C. Schmidt’s wonderful work, and Roger Pearse’swork.

So, the question is, how early did the Church recognize December 25th as the Birth ofChrist?

Before the year 200 AD writers in the Church had established several possible dates.These dates were based on the traditional understandings of when the world was creat-ed, the biblical texts, and some very complicated calculations involving solar and lunarcalendars from different cultures. But by the time Clement of Alexandria wrote his“Stromata” during the period 193-215 AD: Clement wrote. [Stromata 1.21.145-146 ]

From the birth of Christ, therefore,to the death of Commodus are, altogether,194 years, 1 month, 13 days.And there are those who have determinedour Savior’s genesisnot only the year,but even the day, which they say took placein the twenty-eighth year of Augustuson the 25th of Pachon…

And treating of his passion, with very great accuracy,some say that it took placein the sixteenth year of Tiberius,on the 25th of Phamenoth,but others the 25th of Pharmuthiand others sayon the 19th of Pharmuthi the Savior suffered.

Indeed, others saythat he came to be on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi.”

The important line is “our Savior’s genesis.” The month of Pachon in the Egyptian cal-endar at that time corresponded to March in the Julian Calendar.

Christ’s genesis, or conception on the 25th of Pachon was in what our calendar wouldequate with March 25th. The celebration of Christ’s birth would be nine months later:December 25th, in our calendar. ANF 2:333 translates “birth” rather than “conception”.The translation of “genesis” as conception is consistent with Clement’s usage of thisword in other contexts, for example:

“It is not therefore frequent intercourse by the parents, but the reception of it[the seed] in the womb which corresponds with genesis.” (Clement of Alexan-dria Stromata 3.12.83.2)

For more information on the interpretation of the greek “genesei” as “conception” seehttp://chronicon.net/blog/chronology/hippolytus-and-the-original-date-of-christ-mas/

This first evidence from Clement of Alexandria Egypt strongly suggests that before hiswriting the Stromata there were people in the Church who had already fixed December25th as the birth of Christ.

A second example from the same period is Hippolytus of Rome (170 – 235).

Between the years 202 and 211 A.D. the Church Father Hippolytus wrote in his Commen-tary on Daniel (section 4.23.3) about the date of the birth of Christ.

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh,when he was born in Bethlehem,which happened eight days before the kalendsof January [December 25th],on the 4th day of the week [Wednesday],while Augustus was reigningin his forty-second year,but from Adam five thousandand five hundred years.He suffered in the thirty third year,8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th],the Day of Preparationthe fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesaer

(The Greek text can be found in volume 9 of Migne’s Patrologia Gracae)

This evidence from Hippolytus of Rome shows that by the end of the 2nd century, thesame era as Clement of Alexandria, Christians in Europe as well as Africa recognizedDecember 25th as the date of Christ’s birth.

The fact that December 25th had been established for Christ’s birth by the end of the

2nd century is important for refuting claims made by modern pagans and others aboutYule and Sol Invictus which we will cover in future articles.

There are other authors to consider, such as Julius Africanus (early 3rd century).Ephrem the Syrian (lived about 306-373 AD), and St. John Chrysostom (347-407 AD).

We’ll look at them as we have opportunity in the next few articles on the date and tradi-tions of Christmas.

We’ll need to look at claims about Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and Yule. For tradi-tions we hope to cover Christmas Trees, Santa Claus, Caroling, and things associated to-day with Yule like mistletoe, Yule Logs, and the 12 Days of Christmas.

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Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies — Christmas and SolInvictus

Did Christianity Steal the Date of Sol Invictus?

The claim is that Sol Invictus “Invincible Sun” is a moreancient pagan holiday in Rome celebrated on December25th. The claim assumes that this pagan holiday was sopopular and dangerous that the Christian Churchsought to suppress it by establishing the celebration ofChrist’s Nativity on December 25th. By doing this, theclaim continues, the Christians adopted the pagan dayand some of the practices of that pagan festival to makethe celebration of Christmas more appealing to pagans.

Remember first that the Christian faith is as old as thecurse on Satan in Genesis 3:15. And while pagan wor-ship of the sun certainly existed in Rome before the

spread of the fulfillment of that promise in Christ came to the city; the celebration of SolInvictus as a god in Rome actually came as pagans attempted to suppress Christianity.This early attempt as suppressing Christianity by means of the pagan worship of Sol isfound in the Historia Augusta, a pagan history of Rome compiled in the fourth centuryAD.

The Historia Augusta in TheLife of Elagabalus (1.3) relates events from the Roman Em-peror Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, a particularly twisted man, who reignedfrom 218-222 AD. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus came to be called Elagabalus after thename of the Syrian sun god, and was himself initiated as a priest of that false god. Heviewed himself as the personal manifestation of the Syrian sun god. After coming toRome and being established as emperor at the age of 14, the Historia states:

4 Elagabalus [established himself] as a god on the Palatine Hill close to the im-perial palace; and he built him a temple, to which he desired to transfer theemblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the Palladium, the shields ofthe Salii, and all that the Romans held sacred, purposing that no god might beworshipped at Rome save only Elagabalus. 5 He declared, furthermore, thatthe religions of the Jews and the Samaritans and the rites of the Christians

must also be transferred to this place, in order that the priesthood of Elaga-balus might include the mysteries of every form of worship. [Latin]

And, coincidentally, very shortly after Elagabalus tried to establish worship of the Syri-an sun god, Sol Invictus, he was thought to be too licentious and was assassinated byhis own people, pagan Romans, at the age of 18 years old.

From that time there is no mention of the celebration of Sol Invictus in Roman historyuntil the rule of Aurelian (A.D. 270-275). Aurelian did try to re-introduce the worship ofSol Invictus by decree in the year 274. But there is no record of this festival being heldon December 25th. “The traditional feast days of Sol, as recorded in the early imperialfasti, were August 8th and/or August 9th, possibly August 28th, and December11th.”(Hijmans, p. 588 )

Aurelian did declare games to Sol every four years. But there is no record from the peri-od or early historiographers that these games were associated with December 25th inany way. The best evidence suggest that the games were held October 19-22 of their cal-endar. Anyway, on another coincidence, a year after Aurelian declared these games inhonor of Sol Invictus, he was assassinated by his own pagan Roman officers out of fearhe would execute them based on false charges.

The earliest calendar to mention that Invictus as a specified date for Roman religious lifecomes from a text of the Philocalian Calendar, VIII Kal recorded in an illuminated 4th Cen-tury manuscript called The Chronography of 354. In this late manuscript the date is listedin Mensis December (The Month of December) as N·INVICTI·CM·XXX.

[The calender can be seen by clicking here ]

Many scholars through the years have assumed that INVICTI in this calendar mustmean “Sol Invictus.” This is possible. However, elsewhere the calendar does not hesitateto make explicit mention of festivals to Sol, for example: on SOLIS·ET·LVNAE·CM·XXII-II (August 28th) and LVDI·SOLIS (October 19-22).

Even if INVICTI does refer to Sol Invictus on December 25th of this calendar, all thisshows is that the celebration of Sol Invictus was placed on December 25th after Chris-tianity had already widely accepted and celebrated December 25th as the Nativity ofChrist.

There are many historians and people following them who will still assert that Decem-ber 25th is Sol Invictus in ancient Rome. Some will even claim that another religion,Mithraism, has close connection to this December 25th celebration. In actual fact there isno ancient documentation tying Mithraism to December 25th or Sol Invictus. The Christ-ian celebration of the Nativity of Christ as December 25th predates anything in the earli-est actual documentation for Sol Invictus on December 25th. That documentation is fromthe much later Philocalian Calendar Chronography of 354.

[For those interested in a more technical look see T.C. Schmid's article at http://chroni-con.net/blog/christmas/sol-invictus-evidently-not-a-precursor-to-christmas/]

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Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies — Pagan SolsticeCelebrations

Did Christianity Steal the Date of Pagan Winter Solstice Celebrations?

Part 1: The Mis-use of the Church Fathers

This article builds on what was established in thefirst two articles in this series. Please rememberthat these articles are not trying to establish whatday or year Christ was actually born. These arti-cles are written to demonstrate when the Christ-ian Church chose dates, and to rebut the accusa-tions that these dates were chosen in order toembrace or suppress pagan idolatry.

The first article looked at the early date at whichthe Christian Church had through its own Bibli-cal and Liturgical reasoning established a partic-ular date on which to celebrate the Birth ofChrist. The dates chosen were based on whenthe Church understood the Creation took place,when the Conception of Christ took place, andwhen the Crucifixion of Christ took place. And

as early as before the year 200 A.D. the Church Fathers had settled on either December25th or January 6th.

The fact that the early Church had established these calendar dates to celebrate the Birthof Christ by the close of the 2nd Century is important in understanding how and whyfrom the time of the Reformation until now the modern efforts to discredit these datesby claims of pagan origins are false and misleading.

The second article looked at the particular case of the pagan holiday of Sol Invictus,“The Unconquerable Sun” or “The Invincible Sun” and showed from the actual histori-cal documents and resources that this particular pagan holy day was a later inventiondating from after the year 274 A.D. and probably even later than 354 A.D. We also sawthat these sources may likely represent an attempt of pagans to usurp the Christian

liturgical celebration of the Birth of Christ on the date of December 25th.

A very common method of argument is that Christian Church Fathers also prove thatthe Christmas celebration is really stolen from pagan solstice festivals.

Examples of this are:

Increase Mather’s 1687 A TESTIMONY Against several Prophane and SuperstitiousCUSTOMS, Now Practised by some in New-England (ch. 3, par. 3) Increase Matherwas a rabid anti-Catholic Puritan responsible for burning witches in Massachu-setts.Paul Ernst Jablonski’s 1754 Institutiones historiae christianae antiquioris.Alexander Hislop’s 1858 The Two Babylons: or The Papal Worship Proved to be the Wor-ship of Nimrodand His Wife. (ch. 3, section 1) Hislop’s work helped form the theolo-gy of the Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and strongly influencedseveral Millerite groups.Joseph Martin McCabe’s 1903 Augustine and His Age (pages 128ff) McCabe was aman who fell from faith in Christ and spent most of his life writing against Christ,Christianity, and the Church. He was interested in discrediting Christianity so peo-ple would lose faith in God.Will and Ariel Durant’s 1950 The Story of Civilization – vol 4 (The Age of Faith) (ch. 4)And others: like Hermann Usener and Bernard Botte.

The Church Fathers that are usually mentioned are Cyprian, Origen, Chrysostom, andTertullian, and Augustine.

So, do the quotations from early Church Fathers prove that the Christmas celebration isreally from pagan solstice celebrations? The quotations all these authors use, when theyactually quote them, are very few. They are:

Cyprian/Pseudo-Cyprian

A text long thought to have been written by Cyprian is often quotedas linking Sol Invictus and the Solstice to the choice of December25th. The text is titled De Pascha Computus (The PassoverComputation). The authorship is unknown because text itself proba-bly pre-dates Cyprian’s baptism. Some date it to 243 A.D. This dat-ing would also put the text before Aurelian’s October Sol Invictus

games and more than a century before the earliest recorded association of December25th with the Sol Invictus celebration.

The passage is usually cited from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia‘s inaccurate transla-tion:

“O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sunwas born . . . Christ should be born.”

The ellipsis is significant. T. C. Schmidt points out a serious problem with this evidence.We’ll keep the ellipsis to show only the translational problem first:

O the splendid and divine Providence of the Lord, that on that day, even atthe very day, on which the Sun was made [factus], … Christ should be born[nasceretur].

With the language corrected there is nothing in this passage that connects the Birth ofChrist with either the Solstice or the celebration of Sol Invictus. More to the point, thewords left out in the ellipsis demonstrate that whoever originally made this citationwith the ellipses knew he was misleading the reader. Here is the full passage:

O! The splendid and divine Providence of the Lord, that on that day, even atthe very day, on which the Sun was made, 28 March, a Wednesday, Christshould be born. For this reason Malachi the prophet, speaking about him tothe people, fittingly said: “Unto you shall the sun of righteousness arise,and healing is in his wings.” [Malachi 4:2]

The Latin text is from chapter 19, p. 266 of De Pascha Computus.

The Passover Computation places Christ’s birth on March 28, not the Winter Solstice. Butmore importantly, the day was Wednesday, the fourth day of the week. Wednesday isthe day of the week that the Sun, Moon, and stars were created. “The very day” is“Wednesday” the fourth day of the week. Equating this with March 28 reflects the dateof the year when the author believed the world was created.

Schmidt also points out that there is a small question as to whether nasceretur means“born” or “conceived.” But this is not really important to the issue here. Though therewere many different dates that the early Church looked at, by the time this document

was written, December 25th/January 6th were already widely established. What is im-portant is the fact that this document does not support any claim that Cyprian/Pseudo-Cyprian thought that Christmas was based on the Solstice or the “birth of the sun.”

Tertullian of Carthage in Africa (c. 160 – c. 225 AD)

It is often stated that Tertullian had to assert that Sol wasnot the God of the Christians, as if this means that therewas rampant solar worship that Christianity was compet-ing against.

The references given start with Tertullian’s Apology 16. Inhis Apology Tertullian contrasts Christianity with all kindsof different forms of paganism in the world. In the 16th

chapter he refutes Tacitus’ claims against Christianity, forexample; the cross is wood, so Christians therefore worship wood/trees; Christians faceeast to pray, therefore Christians worship the sun; Christians worship on the first day ofthe week, therefore they worship the sun. To this Tertullian replies:

[9] Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude,believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, thoughwe do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, havinghimself everywhere in his own disk. [10] The idea no doubt has originatedfrom our being known to turn to the east in prayer. But you, many of you,also under pretence sometimes of worshipping the heavenly bodies, moveyour lips in the direction of the sunrise. [11] In the same way, if we devoteSun-day to rejoicing, from a far different reason than Sun-worship, we havesome resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease andluxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed theyare ignorant.

The implication is that sun worship is a foreign thing to Roman north Africa, that it wastypically thought to be a Persian notion. Further, Romans thought this facing east dur-ing prayer and praying on the first day of the week implied that Christians followed thePersian notion of sun worship. But using that particular day was no different than tak-ing Saturday off for the Romans.

There is really nothing here to show that Christianity borrowed pagan sources for the

celebration of Christmas. In fact, if the arguments that Mather and the others make wereto be valid, Tertullian would have to be made to say that Christians cannot worship onSunday because it is a pagan day dedicated to Sol. No where do we find anything likethis until the time of the Puritans—who did away with day names for precisely this rea-son.

Next is Tertullians Against the Nations chapter 13, where he addresses the false chargethat Christians worship the sun. There he states the same as in the Apology.

The fact that Tertullian or other Fathers of the Church had to defend the Church againstthe charge of worshiping the sun does not demonstrate that celebrating Christmas onDecember 25th is wrong. It says nothing about the solstice.

Origen of Alexandria (184-253)

Origen is often enlisted as support against the celebration ofChristmas. We saw in the first article in this series that Ori-gen’s predecessor, Clement of Alexandria, had alreadyshown that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December25th or January 6th was known in Alexandria. The claim isthat Origen wrote against celebrating Christmas in his 8th

Homily on Leviticus. Christmas is a celebration of a birthday.Therefore, Origen is made to oppose the celebration of

Christ’s birth (Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, column 495 ).

In his 8th Homily on Leviticus Origen interpreted Leviticus 12 and 13, discussing purifica-tion after childbirth with the sacrifice of the two pigeons or two turtledoves for the new-born child. This sacrifice was necessary because of the sin of the newborn. Origen ar-gued that no saint in Scripture rejoiced in the birth day of a son or daughter because ofthe need to purify the newborn from sin. In the Scriptures he could only find sinnerslike Pharaoh and Herod celebrating their births. And both of those men stained the cele-bration of their births with bloodshed. Origen argues further that the saints, like Jeremi-ah (Jeremiah 20:14–18), Job (Job 3:1–3), and David (Psalms 51:5) cursed the day theywere born. These men uttered these words by the power of the Holy Spirit, so thereforebaptism is absolutely necessary for the newborn.

Origen’s recollection about birthdays in Scripture was not as accurate as it could have

been. Abraham and Sarah both rejoice at the birth of the promised son, name him“laughter” both in admission to their own initial doubt of God’s promise, and for the joyGod had given them. They celebrate the birth and the weaning of that son (Genesis 21:1-8). Leah rejoicing at the birth of Judah (Genesis 29:35). Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz rejoice atthe birth of Obed (Ruth 4:13-17). Hannah rejoices at Samuel’s birth and gives an annualgift for Samuel in thanks for his birth (1 Samuel 2:1-11, 19). The Angel tells Zechariahthat the birth of John the Baptizer will be a cause of joy to his parents and to many, in-cluding those who were there to celebrate his birth(Luke 1:14, <57-58).

Besides the rejoicing over those births recorded in Scripture are the many times Goddraws a parallel between the joy of birth and the coming of God’s kingdom and God’ssteadfastness from our birth: Psalm 71:4-6; Isaiah 46:3-4; 66:7-11; Micah 4:10; John 16:21.

Also, God’s Word points out specifically that the Birth of the Messiah would be a causefor celebration and joy: Psalm 87; Isaiah 9:1-7; Micah 5:2-5, Zechariah 2:10; The WiseMen of Matthew 2—with their gifts; and the Angels and the Shepherds of Luke 2.

So with Origen we can say these things: 1) he was not writing about the date of Christ’sbirth but about the necessity of baptism for naturally born sinners as exampled in Leviti-cus 12 and 13. 2) Origen may have thought birthday celebrations were to be avoided—but he did not stand on solid biblical grounds for that opinion.

In any case, the example from Origen does not demonstrate that the date of Christmascame from the Roman Solstice. Nor does it demonstrate that the practice of celebratingthe Birth of Christ came from pagan solstice practices.

John Chrysostom of Constantinople (347–407)

This particular quotation is often referred to, very sel-dom quoted, and only from one source available now:The 1911 Catholic Encyclopediaarticle on Christmas.The title given in the article is “del Solst. Et Æquin.”meaning “Concerning Solstices and Equinoxes”. Thesource for the article is given as “(II, p. 118, ed. 1588)”,which means nothing. The Opera Omnia of Migne’sPatrologia Graeca does not list this document.

Chrysostom wrote in Greek. The quotation from this

unnamed 1588 source is in Latin with several parts missing:

“Sed et dominus noster nascitur mense decembris . . . VIII Kal. Ian. . . . Sed etInvicti Natalem appelant. Quis utique tam invictus nisi dominus noster? . . .Vel quod dicant Solis esse natalem, ipse est Sol iustitiæ.”

“But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December . . . the eight before thecalends of January [25 December] . . ., But they call it the ‘Birthday of the Un-conquered’. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . .? Or, if they saythat it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun of Justice.”

If someone could find this document, I would greatly appreciate it. As it stands, at bestit can only demonstrate that some people had started to talk about the “Birthday of theUnconquered” some years after Aurelian’s Sol Invictus games of 274 A.D. and after thePilocalean Calendar of 354 A.D. The dates for the celebration of Christmas had alreadybeen selected long before Aurelian.

From what is quoted the writer is not arguing that Christianity took the date of Christ’sbirth from the “Birthday of the Unconquered.” Nothing is mentioned about a solstice.And with so much missing, it is hard to know what this document is addressing.

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine is usually referred to with the following:

“(Tract xxxiv, in Joan. In P.L., XXXV,1652) de-nounces the heretical identification with Sol”(from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, same workas above).

This tractate on John 8:12 “I am the light of the world.He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, buthave the light of life.” The English translation is atCCEL. But in this context it is not the false god “Sol”that Augustine names, but the Manichaean false doc-

trine:

The Manichæans have supposed that the Lord Christ is that sun which is visi-ble to carnal eyes, exposed and public to be seen, not only by men, but by the

beasts. But the right faith of the Catholic Church rejects such a fiction, andperceives it to be a devilish doctrine: not only by believing acknowledges it tobe such, but in the case of whom it can, proves it even by reasoning. Let ustherefore reject this kind of error, which the Holy Church has anathematizedfrom the beginning. Let us not suppose that the Lord Jesus Christ is this sunwhich we see rising from the east, setting in the west; to whose course suc-ceeds night, whose rays are obscured by a cloud, which removes from place toplace by a set motion: the Lord Christ is not such a thing as this. The LordChrist is not the sun that was made, but He by whom the sun was made. For“all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.”

So, again, the evidence enlisted from the Church Fathers to prove that Christianity stolepagan solstice worship for Christmas comes up dry.

Roger Pearse points out: “In 401 AD, on Christmas day, Augustine (PL 46, 996) preachesa sermon discussing pagan customs on the same day:

“Stop these latest sacrileges, stop this craze for vanities and pointless games,stop these customs, which no longer take place in honour of demons but stillfollow the rites of demons … Yesterday, after vespers, the whole city wasaflame with stinking fires; the entire sky was covered with smoke! If youmake little of the matter of religion, think at least of the wrong that you do tothe community. We know, brothers, that it is kids who have done this, but theparents must have let them sin.” [thus far Pearse's quote]

Notice that Augustine is focusing on the destruction of property, vandalism, and endan-gering lives with fire and smoke. Augustine’s argument is: Even if you don’t do thesethings to honor false gods/demons anymore, these vandalisms are still reckless anddangerous to life and property. They must stop.

Summary

There are other Church Fathers that are also enlisted in the effort to prove that Chris-tians ought not to celebrate Christmas on December 25. But the Church Fathers dis-cussed in this article are the most often cited. By seeing the quotations in context we canunderstand how little these writings have to do with the choice of date for Christmas,the pagan solstice, or with any Christmas festivities that we have inherited today.

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