Considering the uncertainty as to the day of our Lord’s birth shown by Clement of Alexandria, and the reserve which Irenæus and Tertullian maintain on the same point, it is surprising to find the most precise data given for its determination by a writer very little posterior to those just mentioned. In the commentary of Hippolytus on Dan. iv. 23 (in Bratke’s ed., 19), we read in the text discovered in 1885; “The first Advent of our Lord in the flesh, when He was born in Bethlehem, happened on the eighth day before the calends of January, on a Wednesday, in the forty-second year of Augustus, in the year 5500, reckoning from Adam. He suffered in His thirty-third year, on the eighth day before the calends of April (25th March), on a Friday, in the eighteenth year of Tiberius, when Rufus and Rubellius were consuls.”[860]
Not merely the astonishing minuteness of the data, but also the circumstance that this passage is to be found in a shorter form in a fragment, long well known to scholars, preserved in the Chigi Library in Rome, coupled with the fact that ancient ecclesiastical writers quote from it the year of world alone,[861] must give rise to doubts concerning the longer form of the passage in itself, as well as concerning the separate data of which it is composed.
If we turn our attention first to these separate data, we find the names of the consuls wrongly given; their names are Fufius and Rubellius, not Rufus and Rubellius. Mistakes in the names of consuls are certainly not rare in Eastern writers, but in the case of a man like Hippolytus, who lived in Rome, such a mistake is very astonishing, since he could easily have found out the right names. Next, according to the authentic Hippolytus, our Lord’s life lasted only thirty-one years, and not thirty-three; this appears from the passage in the so-called Liber Generationis representing in a Latin translation part of the “Chronicle” which, according to the inscription on his statue, Hippolytus had composed.[862] Again, the eighteenth year of Tiberius is also wrong. The forty-second year of Augustus and the two week-days may be correct (see Comm. Dan., 4, 9; in Bratke 8), for the latter appear also in the same connection in the inscription on the statue. Wednesday found acceptance as the day of Christ’s birth owing to the Messias being called in Malachy iv. 2, “the Sun of Justice,” from which it was inferred that He must have been born on the same day of the week as that on which the visible sun had been created (Gen. i. 19).
But, moreover, the days of the week have been interpolated into the text, since they do not fit in with the sequence of thought but rather disturb it. The aim of Hippolytus was here to calm the Christians agitated by the persecution of Severus; many went so far as to think that the last day was close at hand, and Hippolytus opposed himself to this alarm by declaring God had created the world in six days, with God a thousand years are as one day (Ps. lxxxix. 4), and thus the world would last six thousand years. Until the birth of Christ only five thousand five hundred years had passed, and so the end of the world was not to be expected yet. In such a train of thought, what place is there for days of the week and consulates? The late origin of the passage is also betrayed by the parallel grouping of the data given, for elaborate attempts of this kind were popular in the Middle Ages, but not in primitive times. Accordingly only the year 5500 of the world, and perhaps also the forty-second year of Augustus, belong to the original form of the passage in Hippolytus, all the rest having being added by a later hand.[863]
VII
(p. [158])
Christmas in England during the Commonwealth
Christmas was abolished in England in the seventeenth century during the reign of the Puritans, and its prohibition was strictly enforced. In 1644, after the overthrow of the monarchy, when the Puritans came into power, an Act of Parliament forbade all observance of Christmas, for it was held that Christmas was not originally a Christian festival at all, but was of heathen origin. Parliament directed that the 25th December, “which had hitherto been commonly called Christmas Day,” was to be kept as a fast. This law remained in force for sixteen years, and during this period the enactment was repeated and made still more stringent. No church dare be opened, no service of any kind held; the law expressly enacted that on Christmas Day everyone was to go on as usual with his work, and every merchant who shut his shop on this day was brought before the judge and punished. Markets were held on this day which had hitherto been held on other days, merely to make it impossible to keep the day as a festival. Plum-pudding and mince pies were branded as heathenish inventions. The soldiers were charged to break into houses in order to see that no one had food in his home such as used to be eaten at Christmas and when anything of this kind was discovered, the soldiers were to seize it and the people were punished into the bargain. There were naturally some who refused to abstain from the celebration of Christmas in obedience to these directions of the Parliament; many ministers performed service in their churches and several of them were taken before the judge and punished. In different places disturbances broke out, especially owing to the orders of Parliament that markets were to be held on Christmas Day while they were forbidden on other days of the week. In Canterbury, for instance, there was a general riot; the whole town was divided into two parties—those who observed Christmas and their opponents, and the festival of peace ended in a general row; many houses of the town were totally destroyed and some set on fire. Charles II. made it his aim to revoke as quickly as possible the laws passed during the Commonwealth, and so before long Christmas was once more observed as before. The Nonconformists, however, long held by their determination not to celebrate Christmas, and they kept a sharp look-out that at least their ministers should eat no Christmas pudding or mince pies; they called Yuletide Fooltide. In Scotland, Christmas is still regarded as something heathenish; the Presbyterians will have nothing whatever to do with its celebration, and throughout the country no special notice is of it as a religious feast. [This, of course, only refers to the Protestants of Scotland. Trans.]