The Origin of Christmas in Early Christian Sacred Space Michael Kochenash The evidence for the origins of Christmas

and the several centuries of pondering that evidence has resulted in an impressive scholarly florilegium of ironies, interspersed with spurious texts, ambiguous evidence, lengthy speculation, trivial dead-ended issues, and a mounting pile of reasonable-sounding good guesses. We dont know when Christmas started. We dont know who, individually or collectively, started it. We dont know exactly where or why, or how they got the date, though our guesses are probably not too far from the mark.1 Written in the middle of the third century, Origen of Alexandrias eighth homily on Leviticus concerns the first two verses of chapter 12, a statement about the ritually unclean status of women after giving birth to male children. He writes, Not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth. No one is found to have had joy on the day of the birth of his son or daughter. Only sinners rejoice over this kind of birthday. But the saints not only do not celebrate a festival on their birth days, but, filled with the Holy Spirit, they curse that day.2 Indeed, early Christians instead celebrated the day of a saints death, understood as ones birthday into everlasting life.3 Within a century of Origens writing, however, the celebration of Christs birthday had become a mainstay on the liturgical calendar in both the east and the west. Despite how clear the evidence for the celebration of Christmas in the fourth century is, as Susan K. Roll notes in the opening quote above, modern scholars still do not know the who, where, when, why, or how regarding the remarkable about-face among early Christians on this issue. Given the great uncertainty surrounding the origins of Christian celebrations of Christmas,
1 2

Susan K. Roll, Toward the Origins of Christmas (Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1995), 223. Translation by Gary Wayne Barkley: Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1-16 (The Fathers of the Church 83; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990). He gives two examples of sinners who celebrate their own birthdays: Pharaoh (Genesis 40:20) and Herod (Mark 6:21). He gives three examples of saints who cursed the day of their births: Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:14-16), Job (Job 3:3), and David (Psalm 50:7). 3 Ann Marie Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 250.

the purpose of this essay will be accordingly modest: to explore the relation between the advent of the Christmas festival in the fourth century and the evolution of Christian ritual space and to tentatively propose a causal connection. In order to establish a context for accomplishing this task, this paper will review a few preliminary matters concerning scholarly discussions on the origin of Christmas and then survey the evolution of early Christian ritual space, from house churches to basilicas. Finally, after reviewing the relevant Christological and theological controversies roughly contemporary with the origins of Christmas, this paper will propose that the ritual, liturgical commemoration of an event from the life of Christ his birth, in this case beginning around the fourth century is comprehensible, and was maybe even inevitable, as a result of a shift in basic Christian conceptions of sacred space and sacred places. The Advent of Christmas From a modern perspective, the ancient lack of interest in the birth of Christ is nearly inconceivable. Only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke evince interest in the birth of Jesus among first-century Christian texts. With the passing of time into the second-century, this interest began to expand. Texts such as the Protevangelion of James written not long after 150 C.E. attest to this phenomenon. This type of speculation appears to have evolved into speculation about Jesus childhood, such as is attested in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.4 There is no evidence that this burgeoning interest translated into liturgical observance until at least the late third or early fourth century, however. By the third century, some Christian writers were trying to calculate a date for Jesus birth, although their discussions do not appear to be driven by a desire to celebrate that day. By the mid-fourth century, the appearance of Christmas on liturgical calendars testifies to its wide-spread acceptance as a (literal) holiday.

Cf. Oscar Cullmann, Infancy Gospels, pages 1:456-69 in New Testament Apocrypha (2 volumes; ed. W. Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).

Most scholarly discussions about the advent of the celebration of Christmas revolve around the selection of December 25, with much debate about the significance of the feast of the Natalis Solis Invicti.5 The decision to celebrate Christs birth in conjunction with the winter solstice is, no doubt, significant. Even if scholars are able to arrive at an explanation that is for the sake of argument correct, they still will not have answered the question: why? To assert that Christians decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25 in order to appropriate a pagan holiday does not begin to explain why Christians thought it a good idea to commemorate the birthday of Christ in the first place. Not every pagan holiday was given a Christian substitute, so simply observing the association of Malachi 4:2 (sun of righteousness) with Sol Invictus does not constitute a sufficient explanation. The contribution of this paper is to suggest a different approach, one that might have more explanatory power. Nevertheless, it will be helpful to contextualize the contribution of this paper within the broader scholarly discussion about the selection of December 25 and the relation of the festival of Christmas to that of Natalis Solis Invicti. There are two prevailing hypotheses for why the feast of Christmas began to be celebrated on December 25: the Calculation Hypothesis and the History of Religions Hypothesis.6 These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Susan Roll summarizes the Calculation Hypothesis: To state its outlines briefly, the Calculation hypothesis postulates that the symbolic number systems which the early church fathers considered so appropriate to the action of God in the world, [sic] permitted only perfect whole numbers, not fractions. Great personages could only live a whole number of years, implying that the person died on his or her birthday, or in the case of Christ, the day of his conception because of the salvific significance of the Wordbecoming-flesh in the womb of Mary. If Christ was believed to have suffered and
5

Cf. Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1986), 87-112; Adolf Adam, The Liturgical Year: Its History and Its Meaning After the Reform of the Liturgy (trans. M. J. OConnell; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 122-25. 6 For a recent appraisal of both of these views, see C. Philipp E. Nothaft, The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research. Church History 81 (2012): 903-11.

died on the fourth day following the spring equinox, 25 March, his conception should then have taken place on the same day some 30 years before; Christs birth could then be placed a perfect nine months afterward, 25 December.7 As an explanation for the actual birth date of Jesus of Nazareth, this hypothesis is in no way compelling due to its contrived Weltanschauung. On the other hand, the proposal gains a measure of plausibility when presented as an explanation for why Christians in the fourth century assigned Jesus birthday to the twenty-fifth of December. Although aware of the fallacy of chronological snobbery, I find it easy to believe that Christians at that time may have adhered to such a contrived worldview. That they did so is at least suggested by patristic sources, including John Chrysostom and Augustine.8 The other hypothesis, the History of Religions Hypothesis, regarding the selection of December 25 notes that this was the date of the Roman celebration of Natalis Solis Invicti, that is, the pagan feast of the Unconquered Sun-Godwhich the Roman emperor Aurelian established throughout the empire in 274 in honor of the Syrian sun-god of Emesa and which he ordered to be celebrated on December 25, the day of the winter solstice.9 Proponents of this suggestion argue that Christians noted the association of Christ with the sun (Malachi 4:2) and with their newfound imperial backing in the fourth century hijacked Sols birthday in favor of that of Christ.10 As noted above, this hypothesis is not strictly incompatible with the Calculation Hypothesis. According to Roll, No liturgical historian, whatever her or his position on the concrete causes of the development and institution of the Christmas feast, goes so far as to deny that it has any sort of relation with the sun, the winter solstice and the popularity of solar worship
7

Roll, Origins of Christmas, 88 (cf. 88-106). Roll: virtually all of [the proponents of this hypothesis] leave some allowance for the possible influence, one way or another, of the non-Christian solar god festivities and solstice festivals current in the surrounding society and culture, particularly in Rome ( Origins of Christmas, 106). One example of the Calculation Hypothesis can be found in the Pseudo-Chrysostomic work De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis domini nostri lesu Christi et Iohannis Baptistae. 8 Cf. Roll, Origins of Christmas, 97-105. 9 Adam, The Liturgical Year, 122. Cf. Talley, Liturgical Year, 87. 10 For a thorough investigation of the History of Religions Hypothesis, see Roll, Origins of Christmas, 127-64.

in the later Roman Empire.11 The proposal that Christians simply overtook a pagan holiday becomes problematic, however, if scholars are able to date the celebration of Christmas before 313 C.E., at which time began the Churchs enjoyment of the protection of Constantine.12 It is at this point in the scholarly debate that establishing a start date for the Christmas festival becomes imperative. Thomas J. Talley summarizes the impasse aptly, There can be no doubt that in time the association of the nativity of Christ with the day of sol invictus did occur, as we shall see. Whether it was that association that in the first instance suggested December 25 as the date of the nativity of Christ is another and more controverted question.13 Vastly more important for this paper than explaining why Christians decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25 is establishing, with as much accuracy as possible, when Christians started celebrating this festival. The practice of celebrating Christmas certainly had begun by the early fourth century; the question is whether or not we can identify the observance as early as the third century. Of primary value as evidence in this discussion is the Chronograph of 354. This calendar is an almanac presenting (inter alia) lists of Roman holidays, consuls, city prefects, and two lists of burial dates, one of Roman bishops and another of martyrs, with the indication of the cemeteries in each case.14 The Chronograph is the earliest authentic documentation to place the birth of Christ on 25 December, with some indications that this date had by then become pivotal for the Christian community both in the ecclesial and civil calendar.15 This calendar begins with December 25, natus Christus in Betleem Judeae, to commence the year. There is evidence to
11 12

Roll, Origins of Christmas, 107. Talley, Liturgical Year, 87. 13 Talley, Liturgical Year, 91. Cf. Roll: In the absence of solid uncontroverted proof contemporary with the phenomena themselves, to what degree can we credibly posit that the inception of the Christmas feast drew its primary impetus from the surrounding non-Christian cultural context? Even a strong inductive argument is not, by virtue of its relative probability, transformed into a deductive one ( Origins of Christmas, 163). 14 Talley, Liturgical Year, 85. 15 Roll, Origins of Christmas, 83.

suggest that this chronological structure and, more importantly, this celebration of Christmas dates back as early as 336 C.E. The almanac contains a list of Roman bishops between the years 255-352 C.E. The listing of popes follows the yearly cycle from 25 December through 25 December, up to the last two notations: Marcus, who died in October 336, and Julius, who died the end [sic] of March 352.16 Thus, it seems likely that the Chronograph of 354 appropriated a list from 336, marking a terminus ad quem for the celebration of Christmas at Rome.17 The question then becomes: is there any evidence testifying to an even earlier date? There are patristic writings that reflect an interest in assigning a date to the birth of Christ in the second and third centuries, but, unlike the Chronograph, these writings do not suggest that Jesus birthday was a feast on the liturgical calendar.18 Most patristic assertions about the date of Christs birth in the second and third centuries are made within the context of debating when to celebrate the Passover (and, consequently, Christs passion and resurrection).19 In the immediate context before 336, there are a number of important considerations, foremost of which is the ascendancy of Constantine as emperor of the western half of the Roman Empire in 305 and the subsequent Edict of Milan in 313 C.E., effectively legalizing Christianity. Some scholars have observed this association the close proximity of Constantines ascendancy and legitimation of Christianity with the earliest concrete attestation to the celebration of Christs birth and drawn the conclusion that the emperor played a pivotal role in establishing the Christmas festival. The association is made even stronger since the attestation to the Christian festival in question places it on December 25, the day of the feast of Natalis Solis

16 17

Roll, Origins of Christmas, 85. Talley, Liturgical Year, 85; Roll, Origins of Christmas, 86. 18 Cf. Roll, Origins of Christmas, 77-83. 19 Cf. C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Dating the Passion: The Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientific Chronology (2001600) (Time, Astronomy, and Calendars 1; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 40-65. Among the patristic writers (and writings) to address Jesus birth date are Hippolytus, the De pascha computus, and (possibly) Julius Africanus.

Invicti. In 321 C.E., Constantine made Sunday (the day of the sun) a weekly holiday, significant both for the Christians as the day of resurrection, the first day of the week, and for the variety of sun-cult adherents.20 There is good reason to doubt Constantines involvement in the origin of the Christmas festival, however. The importance of the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) will be discussed below, but one aspect is relevant here. Settling a controversy between the Arians and orthodox bishops led by Athanasius the Council of Nicaea affirmed the co-eternal nature of the Son with the Father. Arius and his followers had contended that the Son was a created entity and had a lesser divinity than the Father. The fact that the Arians, with a dash of hermeneutical creativity, could have used the Christmas feast to celebrate and promulgate their own doctrinal approach has implications for the question of dating the origin of Christmas at least in the East and in Egypt.21 The orthodox nature of the festival of Christmas is not in question. The Christological environment surrounding the Arian controversy, however, would hardly be suitable for non-Arian Christians to begin celebrating the birth of Christ, emphasizing his humanity. It is altogether reasonable, therefore, to promote a pre-Nicaean provenance for the advent of Christmas. Two considerations thus caution against the assertion that Constantine was involved in the advent of the ritual celebration of Christmas. First, once the date for the origination of Christmas is pushed back into the pre-Nicaean era, Constantines proverbial window of opportunity to be involved becomes precariously small.22 Second, there is no evidence to establish the observance of Christmas in Constantinople Constantines new Rome before

20 21

Roll, Origins of Christmas, 115. Roll, Origins of Christmas, 177. 22 Cf. Roll, Origins of Christmas, 177.

approximately 380.23 It defies credibility to hold that Constantine played any kind of substantive role in establishing the Christmas feast in Rome but then decided against doing so in his new capital. The weight of the evidence thus supports dating the advent of the Christmas celebration no later than the early fourth century while the possibility of a late-third-century date cannot be eliminated. Early Christian Architecture The approximate dating for the establishment of the festival of Christmas around the turn of the fourth century also marks a significant era in the development of early Christian architecture. From its incipient stage until the fourth century, Christian architecture followed a familiar, well-worn path in cities all across the Roman Empire. This evolution flowed from the house church to the domus ecclesiae to the aula ecclesiae to the basilica. Of course, it is not the case that every assembly of Christians in every city in the empire advanced to each of these stages at exactly the same time. Instead, some churches skip over certain stages; others lack a beginning stage or two. It was around the turn of the fourth century that Christian architecture began to be dominated by basilicas. First, however, was the house church. That the earliest Christian assemblies took place in the households of its prominent members is widely attested in first- and second-century literature.24 Within the New Testament, the historian can find this phenomenon attested in the letters of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, 1 Peter, and the Johannine epistles.25 The literary evidence suggests that house churches were the architectural norm for Christians at least until 165 C.E. (and probably for a century after that).
23 24

Cf. Roll, Origins of Christmas, 117 and 174. Cf. Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 49. 25 E.g. Acts 2:46; 5:42; 12:12; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Romans 16:3-5; Philemon 1-2; Colossians 4:15. Cf. L. Michael White, Building Gods House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians (The ASOR Library of Biblical and Near Eastern Archaeology; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 103-10.

The date 165 is established by testimony of the patristic text, the Martyrdom of Justin, and of the archaeological work done on the Christian building found at Dura-Europos.26 The church at Dura-Europos is not the only identifiable site believed by scholars to have hosted Christian household assemblies. At least two of the so-called Title Churches of Rome exhibit partial or gradual renovation in the transition from being a house church into being a domus ecclesiae: titulus Clementis and titulus Byzantis.27 For many of the tituli, subsequent changes and wholesale destruction have removed what would constitute archaeological proof for either a house-church or domus ecclesiae.28 The writings of Tertullian attest to the continued practice at least regionally of meeting in someones home when he designates the gathering of Christians as a triclinium.29 The next step in the evolution of Christian architecture is the domus ecclesiae. At this stage, Christians began to adapt the houses in which they were already meeting or acquiring a domestic building and adapting it in order to accommodate their larger gatherings. In most cases, it is archaeologically unclear whether any particular domus ecclesiae was converted from a house church or purchased by Christians for the explicit purpose of serving as a permanent gathering place (and thus never served as a house church).30 There are cases for a domus ecclesiae being constructed out of insulae, thermae halls, private houses, and factory halls (horrea).31

26

Cf. White, Building Gods House, 110; L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture (2 volumes; HTS 42; Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 1:103-10; Allan Doig, Liturgy and Architecture: From the Early Church to the Middle Ages (Liturgy, Worship, and Society; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008), 10-17. According to Valeriy Alikin, it was converted into domus ecclesiae sometime before 256 C.E. (it was built ca. 232 C.E.) (The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries [VCSup 102; Boston: Brill, 2010], 55). 27 White, Social Origins, 1:114. 28 Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 5. 29 Alikin, Earliest History, 53. Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 39.15. 30 White, Social Origins, 1:111-14; White, Building Gods House, 118-19; Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 4. 31 Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 7.

L. Michael White observes that the type of adaptation being described was part of a natural progression. He writes, In general, it appears that the first steps toward adaptation occurred in an edifice where the Christians were already accustomed to meeting. Renovation reflects a natural course of functional usage by designating areas spatially that had become associated with specific forms of religious actions or assembly.32 Moreover, Christians were not unique in antiquity for adapting their architectural surroundings in order to fit the needs of their assembly. Jews as well as Greek and Roman religious groups and associations also completed partial renovations when necessary. Most likely, these groups I have in mind Christians in particular would have been prompted to renovate their meeting place in order to accommodate greater numbers. It is easy to imagine a gathering outgrowing the limited space available in a triclinium. Another motivation, suggested by excavations of the church at Dura-Europos, was the desire for a baptistery.33 One final consideration was the gradual separation of the eucharistic from the agap meal.34 Kim Bowes observes that, due to the improvised nature of the space for Christian assemblies, Christians focused their architectural energies on ritual articulation and furnishings, while architectural form was shaped by the preexisting space and assumed an adhoc, rather than a specific symbol or formal character.35 White dates the transition into domus ecclesiae over a period ranging from the middle of the third century, especially in larger urban centers, through the end of the fourth century,36 although there is evidence to suggest that Christians were utilizing this form of gathering place in the first half of the third century (Dura-Europos). In any case, it is attested throughout the period also marking the transition to the aula ecclesiae and even still into the era of the basilica.
32 33

White, Building Gods House, 114 (cf. 111-23). White, Social Origins, 1:111. 34 White, Building Gods House, 119. 35 Bowes, Private Worship, 49. 36 White, Building Gods House, 137.

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The church structure known as the aula ecclesiae is, as the designation would suggest, related to the domus ecclesiae. Although some aulae ecclesiae may have been built from scratch,37 in most cases these structures appear to have been domus ecclesiae modified in order to accommodate a lecture hall. One distinction is that the aulae ecclesiae tended to be larger and more formal types of church buildings.38 This transition began to occur in the third century, among both Jews and Christians.39 Thus, well before the advent of the basilicas associated with Constantine, Christians had begun to move toward larger, more regular halls of assembly.The term [aula ecclesiae] is intended to connote a direct continuity with the domus ecclesiae, from which it evolved through a continued, natural course of adaptation. Archaeologically, this continuity can be seen in two cases from the early fourth century: the villa at Parentium and the church at Qirkbize in Coele-Syria.40 These two examples in particular demonstrate the transitional nature of this type of church building in that they are structured in a way that hints at their future as basilicas but their plan and configurationdepended upon the liturgical use of the earlier domus ecclesiae.41 Aulae ecclesiae thus have metaphorical feet in both camps. One important way in which these assembly halls anticipated the basilica is in its architectural rectangularity, fit for processional and oratorical assemblies rather than symposia. Moreover, some of our examples of aulae ecclesiae even included prominent public edifices, although others were intentionally modeled after domestic structures.42 At some point within the fourth century, Christian architecture began to take its final shape (within the chronological purview of this paper): the basilica. Christian basilicas in the
37

Cf. Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 10. Doig suggests that the Roman tituli, San Crisogono, appears to have been built de novo as a church building perhaps as early as 310 and may have been an aula ecclesiae. 38 White, Social Origins, 1:127. 39 White, Building Gods House, 127. 40 White, Building Gods House, 128 (cf. 128-29). 41 White, Social Origins, 1:128. 42 White, Social Origins, 1:129. The exterior of the aula ecclesiae at Qirkbize was fashioned after the house next door, which was owned by the founder and patron of the church (1:129).

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fourth century were characterized by its colonnaded aisles and recessed apse in the front in imitation of Romes great public basilicas, which served as formal halls in which an emperor or governor received dignitaries or sat in judgment.By the fourth century the church had become the throne room of God.43 The Christian basilicas are categorically monumental structures. In many cases they were built on locations with religious signification, such as over catacombs or places where important biblical narratives took place. The ritual space was highly contrived in terms of art and ornamentation. The treatment of ritual space in Christian basilicas is remarkably different from the way Christians treated the ritual space of their earlier structures. This difference is significant and will be subject of the discussion below. Potential Contexts for Understanding the Advent of Christmas Before addressing the shift in early Christian conceptions of sacred space and the place of the Christmas festival therein, it is important to first consider the theological climate within which Christmas was established. Debates about the correct way to understand the Christ Christology dominate the fourth-century Christian literary landscape. Roll claims that the real impetus for the institution of this feast [Christmas] lay in disputes over doctrine, not in emerging historical consciousness: questions of christology [sic] which cut to the heart of what the Christian faith really represented, and who the Christians were.44 Whether or not Rolls explanation is sufficient without supplementation, many scholars contend that this context is probative. There is no question that understanding the prevailing theological controversies surrounding the origin of Christmas is an advantageous task, even if it provides an incomplete explanation. Of primary concern is the debate over Arianism, although the Donatist controversy

43

Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Womens Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 157. 44 Roll, Origins of Christmas, 32.

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is also relevant. The significance of these controversies will be briefly reviewed. First, however, we will look at the Edict of Milan. It is not the case that Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire with this so-called edict in 313. One of its consequences, however, was the conferral of licit status to Christians. As summarized by Roll: The provisions of the 313 Edict of Milan had abolished sanctions against those who followed the Christian faith, permitted freedom of choice in religion, and stipulated that property confiscated from Christians must be restored. The motives were entirely pragmatic, given the high value placed upon securing the favor of the highest divine power, the summa divinitas for the propensity and stability of the state.45 The date of the Edict of Milan and its proximity within the fifty-year-or-so time period within which Christmas probably originated is especially important for advocates of the position that the institution of the Christmas festival was a Christian attempt to usurp Sols birthday (since they could not be legally persecuted for doing so after the edict in 313). Indeed, the most probable explanation for Sol and Christs shared birthday is that Christians felt empowered by their new legal standing to stake a public claim in a manner previously impossible. It is significant that there is no evidence for dating Christs birth to December 25 before the Edict of Milan, although this datum is more probative in the debate about the motives for dating the celebration on that date than in the question of why Christians thought it appropriate to celebrate Christmas in the first place. Cotemporaneous with the legalization of Christianity was the struggle between Arius and the bishops, like Athanasius, whom history would call orthodox. This conflict came to a climax with the Council of Nicaea in 325. Arius, the presbyter of Alexandria, emphasized to the consternation many of his powerful contemporaries the distinction between God the Father and
45

Roll, Origins of Christmas, 114.

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Jesus the Son. The Father, on the one hand, is unbegotten and without beginning; the Son, on the other hand, is clearly stated by the New Testament to have been begotten. As such, they could not share the same essence. For this and other reasons, Arius concluded that the Son was inferior to the Father in such a way as render him categorically lesser to the Father, like an emanated demigod in relation to the Monad. The Council of Nicaea, called by Constantine, sided against Arius and affirmed the co-eternal and co-equal status of the Son with the Father.46 Adolf Adam hypothesizes that the Arian debate catalyzed the rapid spread of the Christmas feast throughout the east and west due to its attention to the person, and not simply the work, of the God-man and because Christmas gave a suitable liturgical expression to the profession of faith drawn up at Nicaea.47 Of course, as was discussed earlier in the paper, the promulgation of the Christmas festival would have been comprehensible in the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea regardless of which side emerged victorious. Regardless of whether Adam is correct and I believe in a sense he is this hypothesis explicitly concerns the spread, and not the origin, of the Christmas festival. As such, it aptly summarizes the importance of Arianism and the Council of Nicaea in the quest for the origins of Christmas: it is not the context that explains why Christians began to celebrate the birthday of their savior. Prior to the Arian controversy by a decade or two, Christians in Northern Africa underwent a persecution ordered by Emperor Diocletian. Certain Christians in this region were spared (further) persecution under the condition that they relinquish their scriptures, which were then burned by the Roman authorities. The Romans intended this action to be symbolic of a renunciation of their faith. After the persecution ended in 303, Donatus and his followers the Donatists began to see themselves as the true church; they had endured persecution and had
46 47

For a more detailed discussion on Arianism as a context for Christmas, see Roll, Origins of Christmas, 171-77. Adam, Liturgical Year, 124. Roll: In any case, the question is left open whether Christmas functioned in the agenda of the by-then triumphant Nicene movement in the East (Origins of Christmas, 174).

14

forsaken neither their scriptures nor, by extension, their faith. They branded those who compromised as traditores. The Donatists persisted as a splinter group into the fifth century.48 There is no explicitly theological or Christological connection between the Donatists and the discussion about the origins of Christmas. Donatism is relevant here because of the way that Donatists behaved in relation to other Christians throughout the rest of the Empire. Susan Roll explains the most pertinent facet: Augustine charged in Sermon 202 that the Donatists, probably among their less heinous crimes, did not celebrate the relatively recently imported feast of the Epiphany together with the mainline church, which a number of scholars believe implies that they did indeed celebrate the native Western feast of Christmas, possibly before the earlier Diocletian persecution. This provides a helpful datum in setting realistic parameters for dating the origins of the feast.49 Once again, appealing to the theological context has proven to be helpful in illuminating certain aspects about the origins of Christmas such as establishing a terminus ad quem and offering an explanation for why the feasts popularity spread so quickly. Yet, these questions are not the concern of this paper; in order to address the question of why Christians made the transition from not thinking the birth of Christ worth celebrating to eventually beginning the liturgical calendar with the feast of his birthday, we must think about the advent of Christmas within a different context. The primary contribution of this paper is setting all of the above discussion within the context of shifting conceptions of sacred spaces and places among early Christians. These changing conceptions had widespread effects across Christian architecture and ritual space, from objects and accoutrements adorning rituals to the location of new places of worship. According to Ann Marie Yasin, Christians seem to have made an about-face around the early fourth

48 49

For a more detailed discussion on Donatism as a context for Christmas, see Roll, Origins of Christmas, 168-71. Roll, Origins of Christmas 169.

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century on the issue of whether the divine can be located within the physical world;50 this phenomenon is attested in the change in Christian opinions on a number of issues, from the veneration of relics to places designated as sacred (such as the Holy Land).51 Before this time, there is evidence to suggest, on the other hand, that early (pre-Constantinian) Christians viewed certain spaces as sacred in the context of the religious actions performed there. For Christians living within the first three centuries of the Common Era, there was nothing inherently sacred about a location. As discussed above, these Christians met in the houses of other Christians or in domestic structures customized for their gatherings. In the absence of ritual activity, it is unlikely that a Christian at that time would identify these places as sacred.52 Indeed, for most of the week particularly in the case of house churches the space was completely mundane and prosaic. It was the ritual activity of Christians which transformed these places into sacred spaces. It was not uncommon for assemblies to mark the transitory sacredness of their gathering spaces by removing the household ornamentation and replacing it with ritual items such as candles.53 This attitude can be ascertained from reading early Christian texts. Writing in the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr attests to the idea that second-century Christian sacred space was wherever certain rituals generally consisting of prayer, baptism, and/or Eucharist were taking place (First Apology 61, 65). The Didache, dated to the early second century, attests to a similar idea of the sacredness of space due to the ritual of baptism (7.1-4).
50 51

Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 14. She continues, On the other hand, a conception of space sacralized through the presence of the community and their performance of ritual can also be found in early Christian sources. It was further elaborated in the late antique period as church buildings became increasingly codified spaces of ritual and prayer which also articulated the limits and hierarchy of the religious community (Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 14). 52 Cf. Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 36: The lexicographical infrequency among early patristic writers of the terms locus sanctus/ in general, and especially with reference to Christian churches, would seem to indicate that they did not see their places of worship as sites at which God was contained or His divinity made available for physical contact. 53 Cf. Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 39-41.

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On the negative side, there is ample evidence of Christian rejection of inherently sacred physical places in both the New Testament and Patristic writings.54 Within the New Testament, the Pauline corpus is especially vocal in this regard. In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that they are Gods building (3:9) and Gods temple within which dwells Gods Spirit (3:16). Similarly the addressees of the so-called letter to the Ephesians are identified as the dwelling-place of God (2:22). Whereas the New Testament writers emphasized believers status as housing the divinity, patristic writers took this idea to its logical conclusion and explicitly rejected the idea that God would dwell in physical, human-made structures. For one, Clement of Alexandria contested that the human bodies of the Christians, themselves the handiwork of God and not of humans, were alone worthy of God (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.5.29.4).55 Yasin summarizes three other patristic sources: Whether written in Greek or Latin, in North Africa or Palestine, the passages of Minucius Felix, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen take a consistent stance on three central points. First, they share a conceptual definition of templeas a built structure containing or housing a divinity. Second, the temple defined as such is seen as antithetical to Christians since their God is not containable in any physical place or object. Finally, having rejected temple buildings as houses for the Christian God, the authors agree with each other (and with the Pauline position) in locating His presence in the non-material realm, be it in the universal everywhere, or in the hearts and minds of the Christian people. In each case, the evidence from those authors indicates a consistent Christian position that rejects the sacrality of physical, material temple architecture.56 Even after the transition from house churches to domus ecclesiae and aulae ecclesiae, when the ritual space gained a measure of permanence, Christians understood the space to be sacred only in the context of ritual actions instead of its status as a meeting place. Yasin writes concerning the place of Christian assembly, its walls and thresholdsmarked off an area that was

54 55

Cf. Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 16-21. Yasin: these writers emphatically [refute] the possibility of sacred buildings because they envision a Christian God who cannot be contained, but rather is Himself the container of all ( Saints and Church Spaces, 19). 56 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 20.

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definitively Christian: only Christians in good standing were permitted to enter, and upon crossing the boundary into the church, special rules of behavior applied. The church space was circumscribed as holy not in the pagan sense of the locus of the divinity, but for the activity that went on inside it.57 The ritual activities which apparently conferred a sense of sacrality include prayer, singing hymns, partaking of the Eucharist, baptism, and sharing spiritual gifts such as teaching, prophesy, and speaking in tongues. 58 For instance, Origen relates the belief that the place of prayer has a certain charm because once the Christians gather there so also do the angels of the Lord and the spirits of the saints (De oratione 31.5). These holy spirits were thought to be present in the place because of the assembly of Christians, not because of some intrinsic quality of the site.59 This sentiment is perhaps an echo of Matthew 18:20 and/or Hebrews 12:1. Justin Martyr presents two accounts of what the Christians did when they came together for worship. The first describes baptism followed by the sharing of bread and wine and the second recounts an act of worship with readings, teachings, prayers and the sharing of bread and wine standing alone without baptism.60 Ignatius, in his letter to the Smyrnaeans, reveals several prominent aspects of Christian worship at the time: Eucharist, which Ignatius believed to be the flesh of Christ, prayers (both intercessory and communal), and baptism (To the Smyrnaeans 7-8). This account reveals an early Christian emphasis on activities that create sacred space.61 Moreover, Tertullian, in the late second century, writes, We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with him in

57 58

Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 34. Cf. Martin D. Stringer, A Sociological History of Christian Worship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 30. 59 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 36. 60 Stringer, Sociological History, 44, referring to the final few chapters of Justins apology. 61 Stringer, Sociological History, 42.

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our supplications.We assemble to read our sacred writings, if any peculiarity of the times makes either forewarning or reminiscence needful (Apology 39.2-3). All of these accounts, and others, attest to the wide-held belief among Christians in the first three centuries that God was present in the gathered community of His followersbecause it was the space of the church which contained this community and not because because divinity resided in a cult statue or in the material structure itself.62 Thus, for the Christian assemblies of the first three centuries, church buildings were not considered intrinsically sacred, nor were any physical locations or objects. Concurrent with the rise in popularity of the basilica was an important change in Christian conceptions concerning the Holy Land. Constantine rediscovered the sacred sites of Jerusalem.63 Prominent among these sacred sites were physical locations associated with the life of Jesus, in particular those concerning his death and resurrection. Constantines workers claimed to have found the site of Golgotha, the wood of the cross and the tomb in which Jesus was buried. Other principle sites, such as the upper room, Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, were already known and churches were soon built on these sites.64 The choice to build churches on these historic sites suggests that fourth-century Christians viewed these physical locations as intrinsically sacred. Martin Stringer argues that Christians in Jerusalem were thus able not only to celebrate the events of Jesus life where they were believed to have happened, they could also arrange their liturgical calendar to coordinate time and space.65 Christians living outside of the Holy Land, for obvious reasons of geography, could not incorporate the same element of physical space utilized by the Jerusalem church; it could, however, appropriate its corresponding
62 63

Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 286. Stringer, Sociological History, 63. Cf. Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Towards Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 74-95. 64 Stringer, Sociological History, 63. 65 Cf. Stringer, Sociological History, 63-64.

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construction of sacred time with the liturgical calendar. By using a calendar designed around events in the life of Jesus, Christians in Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and elsewhere, were able to celebrate and participate in the sacredness of certain physical locations such as Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives (and Bethlehem!). It is not the case that fourth-century Christians understanding of sacredness being embodied in physical places was restricted to Israel. The actions of Constantine and the Jerusalem Christians were symptomatic of a more ubiquitous shift in Christian conceptions of sacred space. Instead of understanding a space to be sacred solely on the basis of religious activity taking place therein, Christians started identifying the source of sacredness in the locations themselves or in physical objects of special significance, usually relics associated with a holy person from biblical times (Jesus or an apostle) or a martyr.66 Whereas preConstantinian writers reject a concept of sacred place particularly associated with pagans, that is, one housing a divinity, still one cannot deny that phenomena such as pilgrimage and relic veneration betray a new sense among fourth-century Christians of the sacred as contained in material objects and places.67 As a general rule, in the East, it was the authority of the Scriptures that conferred sacrality to specific sites, whereas in Rome and elsewhere in the West, space was ordered in a system of focal points of sacred power that is, by the saints in their churches, most of whom were in turn surrounded by hosts of departed Christians awaiting the Last Day in their graves.68 Thus, the places honored by Constantine and the Jerusalem Christians were identified primarily by reference to the Gospels; basilicas outside of the Holy Land were able to acquire sacredness
66 67

Cf. Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 21-26. Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 26. 68 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 24-25; quoting Sabine MacCormack, Loca Sancta: The Organization of Sacred Topography in Late Antiquity, pages 19-20 in The Blessings of Pilgrimage (ed. R. Ousterhout; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).

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by bringing in an object closely associated with a holy person. Allan Doig describes the process of translating sacredness from one place to another: So the identification of these sites (often said to be by direct revelation) was exceedingly important, as was their architectural articulation. Once authenticated and framed architecturally and liturgically, the place, as a point of connection with the worship of heaven, could paradoxically become highly portable, in images and ivories, through repeated references to their particular architectural form, or if a physical connection could be made by means of a relic. This phenomenon was to be seen at the Holy Places of Jerusalem, transported to Rome at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, with its relic of the True Cross. Proximity to the graves of the martyrs in Rome, particularly at St Peters, allowed others buried there to share the protection of the martyrs sanctity.By these means, sacred geography would continue to spread across the Holy Roman Empire through architectural references to St Peters, the Baptistry of the Lateran, and the Holy Sepulchre.69 In addition to the examples cited by Doig, Yasin adds the high-profile translations of relics of Sts. Timothy, Andrew, and Luke to the Constantinopolitan church of the Holy Apostles in the second or third quarters of the fourth century, as well as the translations of Saints Gervasius and Protasius by Bishop Ambrose in 386.70 At the risk of oversimplification, the new conception of sacred space can be summarized as follows. By the fourth century, a place could be considered inherently sacred or as containing sacrality by Christians if it meets one of the following criteria: 1) it is where something significant happened from the Gospel narratives; 2) it is where a sacred person was buried; 3) it houses a relic that is either associated with a holy person (martyr or biblical personage) or from a location already established to be inherently sacred. But what does this new conception of sacred space have to do with the celebration of Christmas?

69

Doig, Liturgy and Architecture, 51-52. Cf. Richard Krauthheimer, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 23. 70 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 152. She continues: In the decades and centuries following these famous relic translations [in the late fourth century], the deposition of saints remains under the altars of churches became increasingly customary (152).

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As noted above, Christians melded their new understanding of space with their sense of ritual time. The church in Jerusalem, and subsequently churches elsewhere, structured its new liturgical calendar around events from the life of Jesus, events associated with particular (nowvenerated) locations around the Holy Land. Within this framework, Christians also found a way to commemorate the other source of sacredness: the martyrs.71 Assemblies of Christians fortunate enough to live in close proximity to the burial place of a martyr began to structure their buildings generally in the basilica style around the location of these remains, for instance by placing an important location within the church (like the pulpit) directly above them. This action transferred the sacredness of the martyr to the speaker. Liturgical calendars from the fourth century, including the Chronograph, contain numerous references to the dates of martyrs deaths.72 In this way, Christians who were geographically distant from the remains and relics of martyrs could still participate in commemorating their sacrality. The Church of the Nativity, the basilica built over what was believed to be the site of Jesus birth, was constructed by the order of Constantine and his mother in 327. It seems probable that Christians had begun to celebrate the day of Christs birth before this date, although none of the arguments in defense of an earlier date are indefeasible. (The terminus ad quem is 336.) The argument of this paper is not that the celebration of Christmas began at a certain time, however. Instead, it argues that Christians started celebrating Christmas in reaction to a new sense of sacred space; celebrating the feast of Christmas connected Christians all over the Roman Empire with the sacrality of Bethlehem. It is not necessary to posit that the
71

Yasin: Along with the Churchs institutionalization of a system for the commemoration of its special dead which, as we have seen, may be traced back at least as early as the martyrdom of Polycarp in the second century, the systematic recording of death dates of martyrs and bishops attests both to the beginning of a new corporate form of funerary cult, as well as the formation of a new kind of collectivization of deceased individuals. By the time of our earliest preserved Christian calendars, in the mid fourth century, the degree of systematization was already extensive (Saints and Church Spaces, 251). 72 Cf. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions 2; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1981), 31; Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 250.

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construction of the Church of the Nativity prompted the widespread celebration of Christmas (although this suggestion is chronologically plausible). It is much safer to suggest and this suggestion is the contribution of this paper that the same cultural current that prompted Constantine and Helena to construct the basilica in Bethlehem is what prompted Christians to initially consider Christmas worth celebrating. Conclusions Whereas most previous treatments focus on contextualizing the advent of Christmas within the theological climate of the early fourth century or on trying to make sense of the December 25 connection with Sol Invictus, the present paper has chosen a different context within which to understand why Christians started to celebrate the feast of Christmas. By appealing to the evolution of Christian architecture and the corresponding conceptions of sacrality and space, I have attempted to fill a lacuna in scholarship. Treatments of Christmas which emphasize the importance of Donatism, the Edict of Milan, and Arianism are only able to explain why the Christmas festival spread so quickly, why the feast held appeal in the early fourth century, or roughly when the festival was celebrated. On the other hand, studies that revolve around the relationship between Christmas and Natalis Solis Invicti are invaluable for determining why Christians decided to celebrate Christmas on the day of winter solstice; they fail to explain why Christians changed their minds about this issue in the first place. By situating the advent of Christmas within the wide-ranging shift in Christian conceptions of the sacredness of places, this paper fills the void left by these previous types of studies. The origin of Christmas needs to be contextualized within the change in Christian architecture, with the rise of basilicas which were believed to house sacrality in a real way, in order for scholars to understand why Christians decided to try to wrest December 25 away from Sol. By situating the establishment of

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Christmas within the context of the simultaneous popularization of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, of the translation of relics, and of the incorporation of the deaths of martyrs within the liturgical year, the transition from the Christian view characterized by Origens vehement opposition to pagan celebrations of birthdays to Christmas ascent to a place of privilege on the liturgical calendar finally makes sense.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Adam, Adolf. The Liturgical Year: Its History and Its Meaning After the Reform of the Liturgy. Translated by Matthew J. OConnell. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990. Alikin, Valeriy A. The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 102. Boston: Brill, 2010. Bowes, Kim. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Haskell Lectures on History of Religions 2. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. Christmas. Pages 336-37 in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition, revised. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Doig, Allan. Liturgy and Architecture: From the Early Church to the Middle Ages. Liturgy, Worship, and Society. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008. Krauthheimer, Richard. Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Nothaft, C. Philipp E. The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research. Church History 81 (2012): 903-11. Nothaft, C. Philipp E. Dating the Passion: The Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientific Chronology (200-1600). Time, Astronomy, and Calendars 1. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Roll, Susan K. Toward the Origins of Christmas. Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1995. Smith, Jonathan Z. To Take Place: Towards Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Stringer, Martin D. A Sociological History of Christian Worship. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Talley, Thomas J. The Origins of the Liturgical Year. New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1986. Torjesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests: Womens Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993.

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Wescoat, Bonna D., and Robert G. Ousterhout, ed. Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. White, L. Michael. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture. 2 volumes. Harvard Theological Studies 42. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996. White, L. Michael. Building Gods House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians. The ASOR Library of Biblical and Near Eastern Archaeology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Yasin, Ann Marie. Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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