DEAR FATHER | Christ came into the world, bringing light to the darkness

While the celebration of Easter has clear continuity from the earliest days of the proclamation of the Gospel, it is true that the earliest Christians did not celebrate Jesus’ birth. In the two Gospels in which Jesus’ birth is described, no attention is given to the actual date as being of significance. The second-century theologian Origen argued that only sinners, such as pagan emperors, celebrate the day on which they were born. A hundred years later, the Christian writer Arnobius mocked pagan gods who had birthday celebrations. The salvific import of the death and resurrection of Jesus held clear priority in the judgment of early Christians.

But around the year 300, a debate emerged among Christians about the date of Jesus’ birth. Given the early Church’s disinterest in the question of the date, the lack of reliable historical evidence in these debates and even the wide variety of early opinions (as the Catholic Encyclopedia cheekily notes, “there is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Christ’s birth”), it does seem the case that we can’t regard Dec. 25 as a historically verified date for Jesus’ birth.

How was it chosen, then? Many historians in the last 200 years have interpreted the Christian celebration of Christmas as an adaptation of the pagan custom of the Saturnalia, a celebration of the god Saturn that involved multiple days of feasting from Dec. 17-23. (It should be noted that not all would agree with this argument, though. Other possible explanations include a Christian desire for a symbolically significant date of conception such as March 25, which was regarded as the date of Jesus’ death at that time.) Eventually, the emperor Aurelian added to these ancient rites a celebration of the “Invincible Sun” on Dec. 25, although crucially that date was only celebrated from the year 274 AD, which does not predate by much the Christian debates that advance Dec. 25 as a candidate for Jesus’ birth. Perhaps more likely than simply adopting a pagan practice, the Christians of the fourth century may have been spurred by rivalry with the pagans to designate an alternative celebration to Aurelian’s new feast.

But regardless of the original impetus, the staying power of the date is almost certainly due to its natural symbolism. By placing the feast at the darkest part of the year, it is clear that the Church is naming Christ the light of the world, a light that will come into a world at its darkest and that will only grow from this point on. (Notably, the feast of the birth of John the Baptist — also historically unverified — was placed at the summer solstice after which the days get shorter. This symbolizes the claim “He must increase, I must decrease” in John 3:30.) Christ is indeed our light, and we await Him with even more eagerness than we do the return of daylight!

Father Chris Schroeder is parochial administrator of Christ the King Parish in University City and St. Joseph Parish in Clayton.