The Waco daily examiner. [volume] (Waco, Tex.) 187?-1888, 1881-12-27
LEGEND OR FACT.
Christmas As ChriSf's Natal
Day.
Editor ErdNliHsr

Editor EsdNtiRer'
In your issue of Christmas day is an
article calculated to discredit the 25th
of December as the day upon which
Christ was born. 1t is but repetition
of the annually repeated tales of hun
dreds of years, and of course, now as
always, is taken at secondhand and
without any great amount of personal
veritication by the writer. Like thous-
and other things without actual founda-
ton, it is taken for truth because it has
been so often repeated. Allow me to
correct its history. About A. ID. 70,
Clemant of whom st. Paul speaks as be-
ing his "fellow laborer," afterwards
bishop OF Rome) wrote directions to the
churches under his charge, as to the
method OF observing the festival of the
nativity and naming the day as now
kept-the 25th OF December This was
less than forty years after the crucifiX-
ion, and when multitudes of those who
were children when Christ was born
were alive. Not only so, but st. John
himself, the beloved of the Lord and the
adopted son of the Virgin, his mother
was then alive, and lived for thirty years
after that. Although both his gospeI
and the revelations were written by him,
after that he never wrote or uttered a
word in dissent from the action of his
friend and fellow bishop st. Clement. 1t
was utterly impossible that any mistake
was then made by Clement as to the
time; for it was simply regulation of
the method of observing a festival that
was already in being throughout the
churches, and recognition of a fixed
date already well known and Observed
besides, it was too near that event itself,
and there were too many living who
were able to have corrected 1t, to allow
of any mistake being made or passing
uncorrected. During the first twelve
centuries there were not less than thirty
nine of the fathers of the church and of
church historians who left in their
writings evidence that the great festival
was kept upon the 25th of December, and
usually they are in Christmas sermons
preached upon that day. They abound in
every century. Conspicuous among
those who SO wrote are Clement of the
first century, Justin Martyr of the sec
ond, Tertullian ana st. Augustine III the
third and st. ChrysOstOm in the fourth. |
OF these, Justin Martyr, Tertullian and !
all refer to the Roman rec |
ords of state, then existing in the city Of |
Rome, as fixing the exact date of the en- !
rollment under Cyrenius when the tax |
ing was made as mentioned III the new |
testament in connection with the birth !
Of Jesus. The western churches have |
always, through every century, observed |
the 18th of December as the day of |
Christ's nativity. There are thirteen ex-
tant Christmas sermons of st. Augustine .
lg+
the great council of Ephesus, \. ID. 431, |
At winch the bishops OF the world were
present, when the 18th of December
went over for the day.
A religious service was held
md a Christmas sermon was preached |
Dy Paul, the great bishop of Emesa
1t is true that the early eastern
for a time did not observe the
18th of December, but they put the day
If birth and baptism together, and cele
Drated the 9th of January, calling it the
Epiphany. After while, however, they !
separated them, and have since cele
Irated the nativity above and on the 25th /
If December.
It is true also that as far back as his
DRY or legend goes. all the great Pagan
nations OF the etrth have, under one
name or another, held high annual fes-
ival in commemoration of the Lord of
he shortest days and the beginning of /
he longer, or, as they termed it, of the
'eturn of the sun towards the earth, and
hat they fixed upon the 25th of Deem
Der as that day.
This may have been an universal natu-
al prophesy of the coming Of the sun
If righteousness, or it may not make
Christ Pagan or the observing of his
nativity a Pagan festival because his
birth was upon the day of the Pagan
east. b. 4. RoGERs.
Waco, Texas, Dec. %. 1881.