http://www.pemptousia.com/2012/12/the-adoption-of-christmas-in-the-eastern-churches-part-ii/
"Quintessence" Online Journal of Orthodox Theology of the Holy Mount Athos Monastery of Vatopedi
The Adoption of Christmas in the Eastern
Churches (Part II)
16 December 2012
From the time of the restoration of orthodoxy
with the accession of Theodosius, then, the observance of the nativity festival
on December 25 extended smoothly and swiftly from Constantinople, across
Cappadocia to Antioch. The older festival of January 6 continued to be observed
with the theme of the baptism of Jesus. If between Constantinople and Antioch
there continued some confusion as to which of these was the Theophany of Christ,
we can suppose that this was an ambiguity already in the earlier unitive
celebration of the birth and baptism on that day. The reference of the
incarnation to a precise point in the life of Jesus is ambiguous, indeed, in the
prologue of the fourth gospel.
It was otherwise, however, in Jerusalem and
Alexandria. At Jerusalem the old festival of January 6 celebrated the nativity
alone, without reference to the baptism. This was also true for Epiphanius, a
native of Palestine (although he set the Cana miracle on the same day). As did
Chrysostom, Jerome argued in his commentary on Ezekiel that at his nativity,
Christ was not manifested, but hidden, contrary to this Palestinian tradition
(PL 25.18C-19A). Still, that tradition continued firm at Jerusalem throughout
the fourth century and beyond.
There are signs that the December festival was
adopted at Jerusalem at some point in the fifth century, and the episcopate of
Juvenal (424-458) is indicated. We have two sermons for the feast by Hesychius,
preacher in the Holy City from 412 to his death in 451 (PG 93.1449).
Nonetheless, that institution of the feast proved to be only temporary, since
around the middle of the following century Cosmas Indicopleustes (PG 88.197)
comments that the church of Jerusalem is unique in celebrating the birth of the
Savior on the Epiphany, commemorating David and St. James on December 25. That
was also the situation earlier, in the lectionaries from between 417 and 439
preserved in Armenian, where December 25 is the feast of David and James.
However, a principal manuscript of that Jerusalem
ordo (Jerusalem, arm. 121) adds to the title of that feast the rubrical note,
“in other cities the birth of Christ is celebrated.” The editor shows
conclusively that this note belonged to the Jerusalem ordo itself prior to the
introduction of the festival by Juvenal.
Just when the December nativity feast was
introduced in Jerusalem and just when it was given up cannot be more closely
specified. That it was no longer observed in the sixth century is testified to
not only by Cosmas Indicopleustes but also Abraham of Ephesus (530-553) who, in
a sermon on the Annunciation, indicated (as did Cosmas) that the Palestinians
were alone in rejecting the feast of the birth of the Savior on December 25.
The celebration of the feast throughout the
empire was ordered by the emperor Justin II (565-578), according to the
historian Nicephorus Callistus (PG 147.292), and a letter of Justinian a few
years earlier (561) had called upon Jerusalem authorities specifically to keep
the Annunciation (previously not observed at Jerusalem) on March 25 and
Hypapante on February 2, forty days after December 25, rather than February 14.
That letter also makes it clear that by then the Epiphany at Jerusalem
celebrated both Christ’s nativity and baptism, an arrangement jealously
defended by Monophysite forces against the separate celebration of the bodily
nativity on December 25. Nonetheless, shortly after the death of the patriarch
Macarius II (567/568), Jerusalem finally adopted the December festival, and the
itinerary of Antoninus of Plaisance in 570 reports the observance of the
Epiphany not at Bethlehem but at the place of Jesus’ baptism on the Jordan.
In Egypt, also, the feast of December 25 was
resisted for some long while. From the end of the fourth century we have the
testimony of John Cassian that the content of the Epiphany in Egypt was both
the nativity and the baptism, celebrated together. His testimony is the first
secure notice we have of a liturgical observance of the nativity of Christ in
Egypt. Cassian, writing at Marseilles between 418 and 427, says in the tenth of
his Conferences (chap. 2) that the themes of birth and baptism are united in the
one festival.
“In the country of Egypt this custom is by
ancient tradition observed that-when Epiphany is past, which the priests of
that province regard as the time, both of Our Lord’s baptism and also of his
birth in the flesh, and so celebrate the commemoration of either mystery not
separately as in the Western provinces but on the single festival of this
day-letters are sent from the Bishop of Alexandria through all the churches of
Egypt, by which the beginning of Lent, and the day of Easter are pointed out not
only in all the cities but also in all the monasteries” (NPNF II.XI, p.
401).
Since the writer’s purpose here is to describe
the issuance of the festal letters by the bishop of Alexandria, it is unlikely
that he is describing a variation in the festal theme in different parts of
Egypt, although it is certain that there were variant customs within that
country. Cassian, nonetheless, evidently indicates a double theme in Alexandria
itself. It is impossible to know how long that double theme had attached to the
festival.
We can only say that the identification of the
date as that of the nativity reaches back as far as Clement, as does its
association with the baptism, but that earlier in the fourth century the feast
was focused on the baptism to such an extent that the Canons of Athanasius make
no reference at all to any festival of the nativity. It may well be that while
the strong Marean tradition at Alexandria made the baptism (with which Mark’s
gospel opens) stand out as the content of the celebration on January 6, the
memory persisted that the gospel was begun on that day because it was the day of
the Lord’s nativity.
It was only in the fifth century, in any case,
that the festival of December 25 was adopted at Alexandria. There, following the
Council of Ephesus, Paul of Emessa preached before St. Cyril on December 25,
432, and again on the following January 1 (PG 77.1432). This marks the first
celebration of the nativity on December 25 at Alexandria of which we have
record. In view of its relation to the Council of Ephesus, it seems likely that
the December festival’s adoption in Alexandria was motivated by Christological
concerns, as was the case earlier at Constantinople and through Asia Minor to
Antioch following the death of the Arian emperor, Valens. The adoption of
Christmas at Alexandria, again, may have contributed to the unsuccessful and
temporary establishment of the feast a bit later in Jerusalem.
Talley, Thomas J. The Origins of the
Liturgical Year, Minnesota: Liturgical Press Collegeville, c 1991.
