The Church Year and Kalendar

by John Dowden

Why this time of the year, late in December or early in January, was assigned for the Nativity is a question which it is not possible to answer with confidence. It is conceivable that the insecure and blundering argument alleged, among others, by Chrysostom may have had weight. He supposes that Zacharias, the father of the Baptist, was the High Priest, and that he had entered the Holy of Holies on the day of Atonement when the angel appeared to him. The day of Atonement was in September. Six months later (Luke i. 26) the Annunciation was made to St Mary; and after nine months the Saviour was born.

By others it has been suggested that the festival of Christmas on Dec. 25 did not originate in any such calculations; but was suggested by the pagan festival Natalis Solis Invicti marked at that day. The solstice was passed. The sun was entering on its new increases. ‘The Light of the world,’ ‘the Sun of righteousness’ was to take the place of the sun-god in the heavens[46].

The Theophany, or Epiphany (Jan. 6), is, like its name, as characteristically Eastern in its origin as the feast of the Nativity (Dec. 25) is Western; but when it passed into the West it was in thought, either at the outset or certainly soon, separated from the Nativity; and eventually, while the baptism of Christ was not ignored, the main stress of liturgical allusion was on the visit of the Magi, so that the festival is not uncommonly designated simply as the feast of the Three Kings. In the East the dominant thought is the manifestation of Christ’s divinity at his baptism: and in the Basilian Menology the day is simply named ‘The Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ And it is to this connexion, baptism among the Greeks being known as ‘illumination,’ that has been attributed another name for the day, ‘the lights’ (τὰ φῶτα)[47].

It is not improbable that the feast of the Epiphany made its way to the West, through the churches of Southern Gaul, whose affinities with the East are recognised facts of history. At all events it is in connexion with Gaul that we find the first reference to the Epiphany in the West. The pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, in his account of the Emperor Julian in A.D. 361 visiting a Christian church at Vienne, says that it happened on the day in the month of January which Christians call ‘Epiphania’ (Hist. xxi. 2).

The Epiphany was observed in the African Church by the orthodox in the time of Augustine, but he tells us that the Donatists did not observe it, ‘because they love not unity, nor do they communicate with the Eastern Church.’ The latter expression falls in with the supposition that the West derived the festival from the East. In the ancient Kalendar called the Kalendar of Carthage (unfortunately of uncertain date) we find at Jan. 6 the entry ‘Sanctum Epefania’ (sic). In Spain, as we learn from the canons of the Council of Saragossa (can. 4), the festival was recognised as a considerable commemoration before A.D. 380. For Rome, we have to note the silence of the Bucherian Kalendar; but for the fifth century we have the testimony of Pope Leo, and we possess no fewer than eight sermons of his upon the festival of the Epiphany; in these the manifestation of Christ to the Magi is the truth upon which he chiefly enlarges. Elsewhere in the West we have references to other manifestations of the Deity of Christ, as at His baptism, and His first miracle at Cana. But generally, as in the East the baptism, so in the West the manifestation to the Gentiles is the leading note of preachers or theologians[48].

Among the Armenians the Epiphany is reckoned one of the five chief festivals: it is preceded by a week’s fast, and is followed by an octave. It is by them still reckoned as the day of the Nativity.

The festivals of the days immediately following Christmas.

We see that in the Gregorian Kalendar the commemorations of St Stephen (Dec. 26), St John the Evangelist (Dec. 27), and Holy Innocents (Dec. 28), in the order with which we are familiar, were already established in the West. And long before the period of the Gregorian Kalendar we have evidence that in some parts of the East before the close of the fourth century a group of festivals commemorating eminent saints of the New Testament were celebrated between the feast of the Nativity and the first of January. Basil the Great died on Jan. 1 A.D. 379; and his brother Gregory of Nyssa delivered the funeral oration at his burial. In this discourse the preacher speaks of a group of feasts preceding the first of January, namely of St Stephen, St Peter, St James and St John, and St Paul. It may with some reason be believed that the dates of these festivals had no relation, real or fancied, to the days of the deaths of these saints of the Church’s beginnings.

As regards St James we know that he was killed at the time of the Passover, so that the Hieronymian Martyrology makes the day in December to be the day of his consecration to the episcopate. Liturgists have said it was becoming that the King of glory should come into the world accompanied by the chiefs of his court. And it is not a wholly baseless fancy that already there was a desire (of which at a later period we have many illustrations) to connect a great festival with one or more other commemorations associated with it in thought. The memories of the age of the martyrs would naturally suggest the name of the protomartyr; while the relations of the Lord to St James, St John, and St Peter, and the eminence of St Paul may perhaps sufficiently account for their appearance here.