CHRISTMAS, the day on which the nativity of the Savior is observed. The institution of this festival is attributed by the spurious Decretals to Telesphorus, who flourished in the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61 A.D.), but the first certain traces of it are found about the time of the emperor Cornmodus (180-92 A.D.). In the reign of Diocletian (284-305 A.D.), while that ruler was keeping court at Nicomedia, he learned that a mul titude of Christians were assembled in the city to celebrate the birthday of Jesus, and having ordered the church doors to be closed, he set fire to the building, and all the worshipers perished in the flames. It does not appear, however, that there was any in the period of observing the nativity among the early churches; some held the festival in the month of 3lay or April, others in Jan. It is, nevertheless, almost certain that the 25th of Dec. cannot be the nativity of the Savior, for it is then the height of the rainy season in Judea, and shepherds could hardly be watching their flocks by night in the plains.
C. not only became the parent of many later festivals, such as those of the Virgin, but especially from the 5th to the 8th c., gathered round it, as it were, several other festi vals, partly old and partly new, so that what may be termed a Christmas cycle sprang up,which surpassed all other groups of Christian holidays in the manifold richness of its festal usages, and furthered, more than any other, the completion of the orderly and systematic distribution of church festivals over the whole year. Not casually or arbitrarily was the festival of the nativity celebrated on the 25th of Dec. Among the causes that co-operated in fixing this period as the proper one, perhaps the most powerful was, that almost all the heathen nations regarded the winter-solstice as a inost important point of the year, as the beginning of the renewed life and activity of the powers of nature, and of the gods, who were originally merely the symbolical personi fications of these. In more northerly countries, this fact must have made itself pecu liarly palpable—hence the Celts and Germans, from the oldest times, celebrated the season with the greatest festivities. At the winter-solstice, the Germans held their great yule-feast (see YULE), in commemoration of the return of the fiery sun-wheel; and believed that, during the twelve nights reaching from the 25th Dec. to the 6th
Jan., they could trace the personal movements and interferences on earth of their great deities, Odin, Berchta, etc. Many of the beliefs and usages of the old Germans, and also of the Romans, relating to this matter, passed over from heathenism to Christianity, and have partly survived to the present day. But the church also sought to combat and banish—and it was to a large extent successful—the deep-rooted heathen feeling, by adding—for the purification of the heathen customs and feasts which it retained—its grandly devised liturgy, besides dramatic representations of the birth of Christ and the first events of his life. Hence sprang the so-called " manger-songs," and a multitude of C. carols, as well as C. dramas, which, at certain times and places, degenerated into farces or fools' feasts (q.v.). Hence also originated, at a later period, the Christ-trees, or Christmas trees, adorned with lights and gifts, the custom of reciprocal presents, and of special C. meats and dishes, such as C. rolls, cakes, currant-loaves, dumplings, etc. Thus, C. became a universal social festival for young and old, high and low, as no other Christian festival could have become.
In the Roman Catholic church, three masses are performed at 0.—one at midnight, one at daybreak, and one in the morning. The day is also celebrated by the Anglo Catliolic church—special psalms are sung, a special preface is made in the communion service, and the Athanasian creed is said or sung. The Lutheran church, on the conti nent, likewise oi)serves C.; but the Presbyterian churches in Scotland, and the whole of the English dissenters, reject it, in its religious aspect, as a "human invention," and as "savoring of papistical will-worship," although. in England, dissenters as well as churchmen keep it as a social holiday, on which there is a complete cessation from all business. But Within the hist hundred veers, the festivities once appropriate to C. have much fallen off. These at one time lasted with more or less brilliancy till Candlemas, and with great spirit till tNvelfth-day; but now a meeting in the evening, composed, when possible, of the various branches and members of a family, is all that distinguishes the day above others.