Originally, no doubt, the time of the feast was determined by the actual closing of the war-ways and the pastures. Just as the first violet or some migratory bird of March was hailed for the herald of summer, so the first fall of snow gave the signal that winter was at hand[794]. In the continental home of the Germano-Keltic tribes amongst the forests of central Europe this would take place with some regularity about the middle of November[795]. A fixed date for the feast could only arise when, at some undefined time, the first calendar, the ‘three-score-day-tide’ calendar of unknown origin, was introduced[796]. Probably it was thenceforward held regularly upon a day corresponding to either November the 11th or the 12th in our reckoning. If it is accurately represented by St. Martin’s day, it was the 11th[797], if by the Manx Samhain, the 12th[798]. It continued to begin the year, and also the first of the six tides into which that year was divided. As good fortune will have it, the name of that tide is preserved to us in the Gothic term Iiuleis for November and December[799], in the Anglo-Saxon Giuli or Geola which, according to Bede, applied both to December and to January[800], and in Yule, the popular designation, both in England and Scandinavia, of Christmas itself[801]. The meaning of this name is, however, more doubtful. The older philology, with solstices running in its brain, supposed that it applied primarily to a mid-winter feast, and connected it with the Anglo-Saxon hwéol, a wheel[802]. Bede himself, learned in Roman lore, seems to hint at such an explanation[803]. The current modern explanation derives the word from a supposed Germanic jehwela, equivalent to the Latin ioculus[804]. It would thus mean simply a ‘feast’ or ‘rejoicing,’ and some support seems to be lent to this derivation by the occasional use of the English ‘yule’ and the Keltic gwyl to denote feasts other than that of winter[805]. Other good authorities, however, prefer to trace it to a Germanic root jeula-from which is derived the Old Norse él, ‘a snowstorm’; and this also, so far as its application to the feast and tide of winter is concerned, seems plausible enough[806]. It is possible that to the winter feast originally belonged the term applied by Bede to December 24 of Modranicht or Modraneht[807]. It would be tempting to interpret this as ‘the night which gives birth to the year’; but philologists say that it can only mean ‘night of mothers,’ and we must therefore explain it as due to some cult of the Matres or triad of mother-goddesses, which took place at the feast[808].
The subsequent history of the winter feast consists in its gradual dislocation from the original mid-November position, and dispersion over a large number of dates covering roughly the whole period between Michaelmas and Twelfth night. For this process a variety of causes are responsible. Some of these are economic. As civilization progressed, mid-November came to be, less than of old, a signal turning-point in the year. In certain districts to which the Germano-Keltic tribes penetrated, in Gaul, for instance, or in Britain with its insular climate, the winter tarried, and the regular central European closing of the pastures was no longer a law. Then again tillage came gradually to equal or outstrip pasturage in importance, and the year of tillage closed, even in Germany, at the end of September rather than in mid-November. The harvest feast began to throw the winter feast rather into the shade as a wind-up of the year’s agricultural labours. This same development of tillage, together with the more scientific management of pasturage itself, did more. It provided a supply of fodder for the cattle, and by making stall-feeding possible put off further and further into the winter the necessity of the great annual slaughter. The importance in Germany, side by side with St. Martin’s day (November 11), of St. Andrew’s day (November 30), and still more St. Nicholas’ day (December 6)[809], as folk-feasts, seems to suggest a consequent tendency to a gradual shifting of the winter festival.
These economic causes came gradually into operation throughout a number of centuries. In displacing the November feast, they prepared the way for and assisted the action of one still more important. This was the influence of Roman usage. When the Germano-Keltic tribes first came into contact with the Roman world, the beginning of the Roman year was still, nominally at least, upon the Kalends, or first of March. This did not, so far as I know, leave any traces upon the practice of the barbarians[810]. In 45 B.C. the Julian calendar replaced the Kalends of March by those of January. During the century and a half that followed, Gaul became largely and Britain partially Romanized, while there was a steady infiltration of Roman customs and ideas amongst the German tribes about and even far beyond the Rhine. With other elements of the southern civilization came the Roman calendar which largely replaced the older Germanic calendar of three-score-day-tides. The old winter festival fell in the middle of a Roman month, and a tendency set in to transfer the whole or a part of its customs either to the beginning of this month[811] or, more usually, to the beginning of the Roman year, a month and a half later. This process was doubtless helped by the fact that the Roman New Year customs were not in their origin, or even at the period of contact, essentially different from those of their more northerly cousins. It remained, of course, a partial and incomplete one. In Gaul, where the Roman influence was strongest, it probably reached its maximum. But in Germany the days of St. Martin[812] and St. Nicholas[813] have fully maintained their position as folk-feasts by the side of New Year’s day, and even Christmas itself; while St. Martin’s day at least has never been quite forgotten in our islands[814]. The state of transition is represented by the isolated Keltic district known as the Isle of Man. Here, according to Professor Rhys, the old Samhain or Hollantide day of November 12 is still regarded by many of the inhabitants as the beginning of the year. Others accept January 1; and there is considerable division of opinion as to which is the day whereon the traditional New Year observances should properly be held[815].
A final factor in the dislocation of the winter feast was the introduction of Christianity, and in especial the establishment of the great ecclesiastical celebration of Christmas. When Christianity first began to claim the allegiance of the Roman world, the rulers of the Church were confronted by a series of southern winter feasts which together made the latter half of December and the beginning of January into one continuous carnival. The nature and position of these feasts claim a brief attention.
To begin with, there were the feasts of the Sun. The Bruma (brevissima) or Brumalia was held on November 24, as the day which ushered in the period of the year during which the sun’s light is diminished. This seems to have been a beginning of winter feast, adopted by Rome from Thrace[816]. The term bruma was also sometimes applied to the whole period between November 24 and the solstice, and ultimately even to the solstitial day itself, fixed somewhat incorrectly by the Julian calendar on December 25[817]. On this day also came a festival, which probably owed its origin to the Emperor Aurelian (270-75), whose mother was a semi-Oriental priestess of the Sun, in one of his Syrian forms as Baal or Belus[818], and who instituted an official cult of this divinity at Rome with a temple on the Quirinal, a collegium of pontifices, and ludi circenses held every fourth year[819]. These fell on the day of the solstice, which from the lengthening of the sun’s course was known as the ‘birthday’ of Sol Novus or Sol Invictus[820]. This cult was practised by Diocletian and by Constantine before his conversion, and was the rallying-point of Julian in his reaction against Christianity[821]. Moreover, the Sol Invictus was identified with the central figure of that curious half-Oriental, half-philosophical worship of Mithra, which at one time threatened to become a serious rival to Christianity as the religion of the thinking portion of the Roman world[822]. That an important Mithraic feast also fell on December 25 can hardly be doubted, although there is no direct evidence of the fact[823].
The cult of the Sol Invictus was not a part of the ancient Roman religion, and, like the Brumalia, the solstitial festival in his honour, however important to the educated and official classes of the empire, was not a folk-festival. It lay, however, exactly between two such festivals. The Saturnalia immediately preceded it; a few days later followed the January Kalends.
The Saturnalia, so far as the religious feast of Saturn was concerned, took place on December 17. Augustus, however, added two days to the feriae iudiciariae, during which the law-courts were shut, and popular usage extended the festival to seven. Amongst the customs practised was that of the sigillariorum celebritas, a kind of fair, at which the sigillaria, little clay dolls or oscilla, were bought and given as presents. Originally, perhaps, these oscilla were like some of our feasten cakes, figures of dough. Candles (cerei or candelae) appear also to have been given. On the second and third days it was customary to bathe in the early morning[824]. But the chief characteristic of the feast was the licence allowed to the lower classes, to freedmen and to slaves. During the libertas Decembris both moral and social restraints were thrown off[825]. Masters made merry with their servants, and consented for the time to be on a footing of strict equality with them[826]. A rex Saturnalitius, chosen by lot, led the revels, and was entitled to claim obedience for the most ludicrous commands[827].
The similarity of the Saturnalia to the folk-feasts of western Europe will be at once apparent. The name Saturnus seems to point to a ploughing and sowing festival, although how such a festival came to be held in mid-December must be matter of conjecture[828]. The Kalends, on the other hand, are clearly a New Year festival. They began on January 1, with the solemn induction of the new consuls into office. As in the case of the Saturnalia, the feriae lasted for more than one day, covering at least a triduum. The third day was the day of vota or solemn wishes of prosperity for the New Year to the emperor. The houses were decked with lights and greenery, and once more the masters drank and played dice with their slaves. The resemblance in this respect between the Kalends and the Saturnalia was recognized by a myth which told how when Saturn came bringing the gifts of civilization to Italy he was hospitably received by Janus, who then reigned in the land[829]. Another Kalends custom, the knowledge of which we owe to the denunciations of the Fathers, was the parading of the city by bands of revellers dressed in women’s clothes or in the skins of animals. And, finally, a series of superstitious observances testified to the belief that the events of the first day of the year were ominous for those of the year itself. A table loaded all night long with viands was to ensure abundance of food; such necessaries of life as iron and fire must not be given or lent out of the house, lest the future supply of them should fail. To this order of ideas belonged, ultimately at least, if not originally, the central feature of the whole feast, the strenae or presents so freely exchanged between all classes of society on the Kalends. Once, so tradition had it, the strenae were nothing more than twigs plucked from the grove of the goddess Strenia, associated with Janus in the feast[830]; but in imperial times men gave honeyed things, that the year of the recipient might be full of sweetness, lamps that it might be full of light, copper and silver and gold that wealth might flow in amain[831].
Naturally, the Fathers were not slow to protest against these feasts, and, in particular, against the participation in them of professing Christians. Tertullian is, as usual, explicit and emphatic in his condemnation[832]. The position was aggravated when, probably in the fourth century, the Christian feast of the Birthday of Christ came to be fixed upon December 25, in the very heart of the pagan rejoicings and upon the actual day hitherto sacred to Sol Invictus. The origin of Christmas is wrapped in some obscurity[833]. The earliest notices of a celebration of the birth of Christ in the eastern Church attach it to that of his baptism on the Epiphany. This feast is as old as the second century. By the fourth it was widespread in the East, and was known also in Gaul and probably in northern Italy[834]. At Rome it cannot be traced so early; but it was generally adopted there by the beginning of the fifth, and Augustine blames the Donatists for rejecting it, and so cutting themselves off from fellowship with the East[835]. Christmas, on the other hand, made its appearance first at Rome, and the East only gradually and somewhat grudgingly accepted it. The Paulician Christians of Armenia to this day continue to feast the birth and the baptism together on January 6, and to regard the normal Christian practice as heretical. An exact date for the establishment of the Roman feast cannot be given, for the theory which ascribed it to Pope Liberius in 353 has been shown to be baseless[836]. But it appears from a document of 336 that the beginning of the liturgical year then already fell between December 8 and 27[837]. Christmas may, therefore, be assumed to have been in existence at least by 336.
It would seem, then, that the fourth century witnessed the establishment, both at Rome and elsewhere, of Christmas and Epiphany as two distinct feasts, whereas only one, although probably not everywhere the same one, had been known before. This fact is hardly to be explained by a mere attempt to accommodate varying local uses. The tradition of the Armenian doctors, who stood out against Christmas, asserts that their opponents removed the birthday of Christ from January 6 out of ‘disobedience[838].’ This points to a doctrinal reason for the separate celebration of the birth and the baptism. And such a reason may perhaps be found in the Adoptionist controversies. The joint feast appeared to lend credence to the view, considered a heresy, but still adhered to by the Armenian Church, that Christ was God, not from his mother’s womb, but only from his adoption or spiritual birth at the baptism in Jordan. It was needful that orthodox Christians should celebrate him as divine from the very moment of his carnal birth[839].