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T. K. Cheyne’s Encyclopædia Biblica cites a famous learned Jesuit—A.Lupi—declaring in 1785 that there is not a single month in the year to which the Nativity has not been assigned by some writer or other.17 This ought to remind us of the great ambiguity in establishing Christ’s birth, an ambiguity purposed by God in his providential sovereignty.

The first date connected with the birth of the Lord Jesus, was not December 25 but January 6. The origin of this Epiphany festival is very obscure, neither can we say with certainty what its meaning was at first, the date probably having a pagan origin in connection with the birth of the world (the Egyptians celebrating the winter solstice on this date since 2000 BC). The Alexandrian Gnostic heretic—Basilides—teaching between 117 and 138 AD, and his followers, appear to be the first in the church to link this date with the Lord’s birthday. Epiphany had come to be regarded as referring to two different events: the appearance of the wise men to worship Jesus and his appearance to be baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, although it also alluded to his birth/nativity. (In the Greek Church to this day, Epiphany remains of greater significance than Christmas, and in the Armenian Church, December 25 is not recognized at all.)

Respecting the early church fathers, Irenaeus (130–202) from Polycarp’s hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor, Origen (184–254) from Alexandria in Egypt, and Tertullian (160–225) from Carthage, modern Tunisia, do not include Christmas or Epiphany, or their dates on their lists of feasts and celebrations (although Origen’s teacher—Clement of Alexandria (d. 215)—recorded that some Christians believed Jesus to have been born in April). Tertullian (dogmatic in his belief that Christ had been crucified on March 25, a date also believed by some to be the sixth day of Creation when Adam was made) rebuked Christians for partaking in pagan festivals.

Writing probably between 200 and 210, he states, “The Saturnalia, the feasts of January, the Brumalia and Matronalia, are now frequented; gifts are carried to and fro, new year’s day presents are made with din and sports, and banquets are celebrated with uproar.”18 We do not know if those referred to were believers brought up as Christians or those who had more recently come into the church. In any event, they obviously were still attached to the prevailing festivals of paganism in their society. (Brumalia was the month-long pagan feast centered upon crop sowing that immediately preceded Saturnalia; Matronalia at the beginning of March, celebrated the goddess of childbirth.)

Origen, who spent the last twenty-five years of his life in Palestine, writing around 248, laments that in spite of Paul’s criticism of believers in Galatia and elsewhere observing Jewish festal days, Christians were still “observing” different days such as Preparation, Passover, and Pentecost. There is, however, no mention of pagan days and Origen makes it clear that the most important day to be observed is the Lord’s Day.19 Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160–240) was a Christian traveller and historian who wrote Chronographiai in 221, popularizing the belief that Christ was conceived on March 25 and therefore born on December 25. In coming decades this led some in the church to desire the recognition and celebration of December 25 as Christ’s birthday, something that Origen emphatically denounced in 245, not on the basis of the date chosen but on the principle that such birthday celebrations lacked biblical warrant, as he said himself, as if Christ “were a king Pharaoh.”20 (Pharaoh and Herod being the only examples in the Bible where birthdays are recorded, both days characterized by murder: Gen 40:20; Matt 14:6.)

As we noted in the preceding chapter, in 313 Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity (he claimed to have been converted but his policies and lifestyle merely display a recognition of Christianity’s importance in the politics of his empire, not of any saving change in his heart). Paganism was not banished but all religions tolerated. This legalization made it easier to establish universal dates of feasts and organize their celebration; indeed, some historians credit Constantine with replacing the pagan events on December 25 with what would later become known as Christmas or the Nativity.

The Arch of Constantine I, Rome, built in 315 AD.

Constantine established the capital of the eastern part of the empire in Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honor. With the exception of Julian, who in 362 sought to displace Christianity and restore the empire’s former power by embracing polytheism (including Mithraism), the subsequent emperors after Constantine all observed Christianity.

In the East, the concelebration of the two events of Christ’s birth and baptism continued for some time after Rome had instituted the separate feast of Christmas. Gradually, however, as the church in Rome grew in its power and influence, the Roman use spread: at Constantinople, December 25 was introduced in about 380 by the theologian Gregory Nazianzen; at Antioch it appeared in 388; and at Alexandria in 432 (the church of Jerusalem refusing to adopt the new feast until the seventh century).

Moreover, the Arian controversy raging at this time over Christ’s Divinity (debated in several convened councils, from Nicaea, just south of Constantinople in 325, to Constantinople in 381) may well have lead some believers to place an overemphasis on Christ’s birth and the events surrounding it, as they sought to prove that he was truly man, truly God, and truly one. The Alexandrian school argued that Christ was the Divine Word made flesh (see John 1:14), while the Antioch school held that he was born human and infused with the Holy Spirit at the time of his baptism (see Mark 1:9–11). A feast celebrating Christ’s birth gave the church an opportunity to promote the intermediate view that Christ was Divine from at least the time of his incarnation.

There are no extant records (minutes) of the Council of Nicaea and Constantine appears to have been the decision-maker. He decreed that Jesus was divine and coequal with God the Father. While his decision is theologically correct, one wonders if he made it in part because it suited him to merge Jesus with his sun-god!

We quote Schaff, whose source is Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 275–339):

The moment the approach of the emperor was announced by a given signal, they all rose from their seats, and the emperor appeared like a heavenly messenger of God, covered with gold and gems, a glorious presence, very tall and slender, full of beauty, strength, and majesty. With this external adornment he united the spiritual ornament of the fear of God, modesty, and humility, which could be seen in his downcast eyes, his blushing face, the motion of his body, and his walk. When he reached the golden throne prepared for him, he stopped, and sat not down till the bishops gave him the sign. And after him they all resumed their seats. . . .

There are supposed numerous accounts of the events of Nicea (the twenty Canones, the doctrinal Symbol, and a Decree of the Council of Nicaea, and several Letters of bishop Alexander of Alexandria and the emperor Constantine (all collected in Greek and Latin in Mansi: Collect. sacrorum Conciliorum, tom. ii. fol. 635–704). Official minutes of the transactions themselves were not at that time made; only the decrees as adopted were set down in writing and subscribed by all (comp. Euseb. Vita Const. iii. 14). All later accounts of voluminous acts of the council are sheer fabrications.21

The first reference to December 25 as a Christian feast day in ancient documents is in The Chronography of 354 (also known as the Calendar of 354), which was an illustrated manuscript produced in 354 for a wealthy Roman Christian named Valentinus. The work refers to the year 336 when it was recognized by some that the birth of Christ took place in Bethlehem, Judea, on December 25.22 Vatican records reveal that Christmas was instituted in Rome by Pope Liberius at some time during his period in office (352–366). Ambrose (340–397) records in a letter to his sister that when she was consecrated as a nun by Liberius on December 25, 360, he addressed her as follows: “Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth-festival of thy bridegroom,” which appears to imply the existence of the Christmas feast day.23

A few decades later it had become established in the eastern part of the church also. Writing in 400, John Chrysostom, from Antioch, who had become the chief or “arch” bishop of Constantinople, was aware of the date being associated with pagan gods but clearly saw no problem in adopting the date as a celebration of Jesus’ supposed birthday, commenting:

But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December . . . the eight before the Kalends of January [December 25]. . . . But they call it the “Birthday of the Unconquered.” Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . . ? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun of Justice.24

Earlier in 386, he delivered the Christmas homily in his home town of Antioch on December 25 and called the festival, “the fundamental feast, or the root, from which all other Christian festivals grow forth.”

Rome fell to the Barbarians in the fifth century and the Roman Empire in the west effectively came to an end (although continuing in the east for another millennium until falling to Sunni Muslim Turks in 1453). Its end began with the sacking of Rome by the Goths in 410. Into this vacuum, the papacy provided continuity with the past and continued to establish both religious and secular influence.

Pope Innocent I was followed by Pope Leo (“the Great”), who is credited with saving Rome from physical destruction by his diplomacy with Attila the Hun in 452 (the Huns being Eurasian nomads who had migrated west into Europe around 370 AD) and the Vandals (from North Africa) in 455. Pope Gelasius I was the first to take to himself the title, “Vicar of Christ,” in 494 and he also invented St. Valentine’s Day on February 14, in an attempt to combat the persistent legacy of the Roman festivals of Lupercalia and Juno Februata, the most sexually promiscuous of all the Roman festivals. Of great significance is the fact that the victorious Barbarians adopted Christianity (i.e., either Roman Catholicism or Arianism) as their own religion. The first to do so was Clovas I, king of the Franks who became a Roman Catholic in 492.

In 567, Pope John III called the Council of Tours, France, at which the celebration of Christmas in the West on December 25 was formally combined with the celebration of the Epiphany in the East on January 6, to form the “Twelve Days of Christmas.”

At the Council of Mâcon (581) it enjoined that from Martinmas (November 11), the second, fourth, and sixth days of the week should be fasting days. At the close of the sixth century, Rome, under Pope Gregory (“the Great”), adopted the rule of the four Sundays in Advent.

Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with Augustine of Hippo, N. Africa, 354–430), had been a Benedictine monk in Rome, when in 595 he was chosen by Pope Gregory I to Christianize England. Whether or not the Celtic Church further north had already introduced Christmas, Augustine certainly did. On Christmas Day 598, he is said to have witnessed the baptism of 10,000 converts to Christianity.

Christmas Day began to achieve Europe-wide prominence after Charlemagne’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor on December 25, 800, by Pope Leo III in Rome. Charlemagne was a Frank and inaugurated the Carolingian Dynasty, laying the foundations for the modern states of France and Germany. (The Holy Roman Empire encompassed the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, present-day Germany, western Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Austria, Switzerland, as well as parts of eastern France, northern Italy, and Slovenia. It developed a complex legal and political structure. Its central figure was the emperor, whose position combined ancient Roman pretensions of universal and divinely sanctioned rule, with the Germanic tradition of elected kingship. By 1600 it was a mere shadow of its former glory, as its German heartland had been split into a mass of princes and states. It would continue in name until 1806 when it and its coalition of states were defeated by Napoleon.)

In Germany, Christmas was formally established by the Synod of Mainz in 813.

The synod or Council of Chelsea in 816 was called by the King of Mercia (the kingdom of Mercia incorporating all of Britain south of the Humber, minus Wales and the west of Cornwall). The Council enforced the observance of Christmas on December 25, this date formerly being called “Mothers Night,” a vigil in honor of the rebirth of the new sun. King Edmund the Martyr (of East Anglia) was anointed on Christmas Day in 855.

By the ninth century, priests, deacons, and choirs with antiphonal singing were acting the parts of the magi and shepherds during mass on Christmas Day, some churches even suspending a star from the roof which was then pulled to make it move!

Around 950, Christmas was adopted in Norway by King Hakon the Good. There had existed a pagan Yule feast that had been celebrated in the eighth century, if not earlier, and occurred in mid-January throughout most of Scandinavia. King Hakon transferred it to December 25th. King Æthelred of England, who reigned from 978 to 1016, ordained in his laws that Christmas was to be a time of peace and concord among Christian men, when all strife must cease. King William I of England (“the Conqueror”) was crowned on Christmas Day 1066. The anglicized word Christmas, a contraction of “Christ’s mass,” first appeared in writing in 1038 but did not assume common usage in Britain until after the Norman invasion. Prior to that, the festival was always referred to as “In Festis Nativitatis,” the Feast of the Nativity. (It has also been called Noël or Nowel. As to the derivation of the word Noël, some say it is a contraction of the French nouvelles (tidings), les bonnes nouvelles; that is, “The good news of the Gospel”; others take it as an abbreviation of the Gascon or Provençal nadaü, nadal, which means the same as the Latin natalis; that is, dies natalis, “the birthday.” Others say Noël is a corruption of Yule, Jule, or Ule, meaning, “The festival of the sun.” The name Yule is still applied to the festival in Scotland and some other places. Christmas is represented in Welsh by Nadolig, which signifies “the natal, or birth” and in Italian by Il Natale, which, together with its cognate term in Spanish, is simply a contraction of dies natalis, “the birthday.”)

In central Italy, St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 held a midnight mass on Christmas Eve with a nativity scene and live animals. The people in the plays sang songs or “canticles” that told the story during the plays. Although generally credited as being the first nativity play, as we have noted above, something similar had occurred in earlier centuries.

However, where biblical truths from the Apostolic era had been retained, in isolated groups in the region of the Alps such as those who subsequently became known as the Albigenses and Waldenses, Christmas was rejected. This became evident during the Inquisition by Rome, set up by Pope Innocent III around 1200 and initially enforced by Pope Gregory IX in 1233, in order to identify and eradicate “heretics.”

A Romish Inquisitor, in speaking of the Waldenses, tells us:

They . . . affirm that the traditions of the church are no better than the traditions of the Pharisees, insisting, moreover, that greater stress is laid on the observance of human tradition than on the keeping of the law of God.

Seisselius, Archbishop of Turin, states:

They receive only what is written in the Old and New Testaments.

Reinerius Saccho, who provided condemning evidence against them to the Inquisition in a 1254 report entitled, “Of the Sects of the Modern Heretics,” reports:

Whatever is preached that is not substantiated by the text of the Bible they esteem fables. They hold that none of the ordinances of the church which have been introduced since Christ’s ascension ought to be observed, as being of no value.25

The French Inquisitor Bernard Gui, writing in 1320, sweepingly describes the Waldenses as having rejected all the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, namely ecclesiastical authority, especially by their conviction that they were not subject to the pope or his decrees of excommunication. He goes on to complain how all Catholic feast-days, festivals, and prayers were rejected by them as man-made and not based upon the New Testament.26

King Richard II of England hosted a Christmas feast in 1377, at which twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep were eaten. “Misrule,” with drunkenness, promiscuity, and gambling, remained an important aspect of the festival.

Some of the customs of the Saturnalia carnival appear to have been transferred into Carnival in February, first celebrated in the thirteenth century and commencing after Candlemas is over (although in some countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, it commences at Martinmas in November). It is largely a Roman Catholic or Orthodox festival. The selection of modern Venetian Carnival masks, shows one feature of Carnival which remains to this day with its spread globally, which is that of “masking,” often as part of cross-dressing.

We noted above how the practice of parading naked in the streets formed a part of Saturnalia, whether the act was voluntary or forced at the behest of the Lord of Misrule. As part of Carnival, the Mardi Gras commences on Epiphany or the Twelfth Night (January 6 when traditionally all Christmas decorations are to be removed). Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday” and is synonymous for parades, immorality, and excessive partying and feasting immediately before the fasting period of Lent commences. We noted that in the Saturnalia, binge eating, including by force, was also an intrinsic part of the festival. In any event, in Rome in 1466 during Carnival, Pope Paul II forced Jews to run naked along the main street, the Via Lata, for the entertainment of non-Jews. An eyewitness account reports:

Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran . . . amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.27

(Interestingly, as part of the Carnival throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jewish rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in 1836 to Pope Gregory XVI, begging him to stop this annual abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.”)28

By 1500 the festival of Christmas was firmly established wherever the Roman Catholic Church held sway, including in Scotland. The annual indulgence in eating, dancing, singing, sporting, and card playing escalated in England and by the seventeenth century, the Christmas season featured lavish dinners, elaborate masques, and pageants.

Following his protest in 1517 and with that the initializing of the Reformation, Luther in subsequent years saw little problem with Christmas and very much encouraged the celebration. Luther appeared initially to take a unified stance with Calvinists against holy days, writing in 1520 in his “Address to the Nobility of the German Nation:”

One should abolish all festivals, retaining only the Lord’s Day.

But if it were desired to keep the festivals of Our Lady and the greater saints, they should all be held on Sundays, or only in the morning with the mass; the rest of the day being a working day. My reason is this: with our present abuses of drinking, gambling, idling, and all manner of sin, we vex God more on holy days than on others. And the matter is just reversed; we have made holy days unholy, and working days holy, and do no service; but great dishonor, to God and his saints will all our holy days. There are some foolish prelates that think they have done a good deed, if they establish a festival to St. Otilia or St. Barbara, and the like, each in his own blind fashion, whilst he would be doing a much better work to turn a saint’s day into a working day in honor of a saint.29

However, Luther’s reasoning appears to have been motivated by pragmatism in order to counter “the present abuses” he identified.

Excursus on Lutheranism

Standing on the doctrine of sola Scriptura, Martin Luther (1483–1546) was very successful at eliminating many of the perverse teachings of Romanism (e.g., the Roman Catholic mass, auricular confession, pilgrimages, the saints as mediators, the sacerdotal priesthood, etc.). As Brian Schwertley suggests, unfortunately, perhaps as a result of his conservative personality, or his comfort with medieval style worship, or even a simple error in logic, he never made the connection between Scripture alone and the need of Divine warrant for worship ordinances, in the way that Calvin and others did. Luther held that human traditions in worship are valuable and should be respected as long as they do not contradict the Bible. In other words, only rites and ceremonies that are expressly forbidden by Scripture should be disallowed. As a result of the inconsistent application of sola Scriptura to only some matters relating to worship, the Lutherans retained many ceremonies, rites, and practices that were not derived from the Bible. It is then hardly surprising that a large portion of the ceremonial, ritualistic, and governmental structures of the Roman Catholic Church manifested themselves in Lutheranism. For whatever reason, Luther and his successors seem not to have realized that the very structures they were retaining, were the original causes of the historical corruption in the church against which Luther had rebelled in the first place!30

The Anglican or Episcopal Church also gave the church the power to decide and establish ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies not derived from Scripture. While in many ways the Lutheran and Anglican churches became a vast improvement over Rome (e.g., regarding justification by faith alone), they both denied the absolute authority of Scripture in the area of worship.

Fifty years before Luther, the first ever Protestant Church (the Moravians), led by Jan Hus (John Huss, 1370–1415) also tolerated Christmas. Der Haus-Christ, meaning “the House Christ,” was a term used in sixteenth century Germany for the gift-bringer. German Protestants, who wished to abolish the Catholic cult of saints, needed a replacement for St. Nicholas as the traditional bearer of presents at Christmas. Clergymen chose to speak of Christ himself as the bringer of good things at Christmas and his collection of gifts as the “Christ-bundle.” This shows how Protestants recognized the pagan roots of the gift-giving practice during the Reformation. However, rather than abandoning the pagan practice, some chose to attempt to “Christianize” it. Ironically, this is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church had done twelve centuries earlier. The Reformers were condemning the Roman church for incorporating paganism into the church, but some of the Reformers themselves were unwilling to completely walk away from the cult-like behavior.

In Zurich, Zwingli abolished the vast majority of the Roman Catholic holy days but several, including Christmas, were retained. William Farel (1489–1585) arrived in Geneva (pictured) in 1532 and ministered there as a Reformed pastor with Peter Viret (1511–1571). Calvin joined Farel in 1536 and both sought to move the city toward a more biblical lifestyle.

Farel instigated a ban on all holy days, including Christmas, which caused uproar in the city. In so doing, he followed the example of Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, two hundred miles to the north. Bucer had assumed leadership of the Reformation there in 1529, and in 1535 he eliminated all holy days from the church calendar, except the weekly Lord’s Day.31

Calvin supported Farel but adopted a more conciliatory approach to the matter, declaring that “little will be said about ceremonies before the judgement-seat of God.”

There was a struggle between those who wanted the magistrates firmly in control of the clergy and others, like Calvin, who wanted a city where the clergy were free to preach what they wanted from the pulpit and administer the sacraments as they wished.

Matters came to a head over several practical issues demanded by the Council, including the reintroduction of Christmas and other holy days. In 1538, Geneva’s city elections resulted in a demand to the pastors to imitate Bern (where Bernhold Haller and then Caspar Hedio pastored) and re-adopt Christmas and other holy days, among other things. Calvin and others refused to comply with what they viewed as unwarranted interference in spiritual matters.

After they ignored an order banning them from their pulpits, in April 1538 Farel and Calvin were forced by the Council to leave the city, which they did, going to Strasbourg (pictured). It was there, while agreeing to pastor a group of French refugees, that Calvin experienced the power of congregational song on a regular basis, which stimulated his preparation of a complete French psalter.

Farel never returned to Geneva, ministering in Strasbourg and Neufchatel, but Calvin returned for an intended stay of a week in 1541 and to great acclaim from most in the city, only to remain there for the rest of his life!

Calvin progressively endeared himself and his teaching to the influential families in the city and Geneva’s City Council became increasingly Reformed. The functions of the church in Geneva and its relationship to the state were embodied in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which were officially adopted and promulgated by the General Council on November 20, 1541. Calvin insisted that the Lord’s Day was the Christian’s true holiday. In 1545 and after much campaigning, the Genevan Company of Pastors persuaded the magistrates to follow Bucer’s example in Strasbourg, outlawing all holy days. They feared that the retention of days such as Christmas would reinforce the long-standing superstition as to the sacred value of certain days and seasons.32

According to the Register of the Company of Pastors, in 1546, Calvin and his fellow pastors issued an edict to the effect that “those who observe the Romish festivals or fasts shall only be reprimanded, unless [i.e., if] they remain obstinately rebellious.”33 On Sunday, November 16, 1550, an edict was issued by the pastors reaffirming a ban on holy days: “Respecting the abrogation of all festivals, with the exception of Sundays, which God had ordained.” Holy days were to be treated as a normal working day.

A church member in Geneva, Antoine Cadran, was suspended from the Lord’s Table for “impertinence and lies,” for maintaining that Geneva was wrong for not practicing Christmas, which, he maintained, was a mandatory requirement of Scripture as a commemoration of Noah’s flood! It had been the custom to hold the Lord’s Supper four times a year, including on Christmas Day, but this was now changed and moved to the Sunday closest to December 25.34

Calvin was more relaxed on the issue of holy days than Farel or Bucer. He and others viewed the “evangelical feast days,”35 as they called them, not as a part of the Christian’s accomplishment of his or her salvation, as viewed by the Church of Rome, but as celebrations of the salvation that Christ had already accomplished for them in his incarnation (Christmas), death (Good Friday), resurrection (Easter), ascending to the Father (Ascension), and giving of his Spirit (Pentecost). He subsequently recommended that Christmas Day be observed in the morning only and that shops and trades resumed work as normal in the afternoon. These views are expressed in two different letters he sent, one from Geneva, dated January 2, 1551, to John Haller, pastor in Bern (previously an understudy to Bullinger in Zurich),36 and the other from Lausanne, dated March 1555, to the leaders of Bern.37 However, although Calvin permitted the retention of Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and Ascension, the Council of Geneva disagreed with him and subsequently re-introduced the ban on all these “holy days” once again. Although the Council, during and after Calvin’s life, sought at times to reintroduce former practices, including reintroducing holidays such as Christmas into the church calendar, the Company of Pastors consistently rebuffed the attempts.38

Calvin’s Commentaries on the Bible are appreciated the world over; however, we only have them because he did so much consecutive preaching, selecting a Bible book then preaching through it week by week, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse. One of the benefits that Calvin received in Geneva was the appointment of a stenographer to record his sermons. As Calvin worked his way slowly and systematically through one book of the Bible at a time, he produced 123 sermons on Genesis, 200 sermons on Deuteronomy, 159 sermons on Job, 176 sermons on First and Second Corinthians, and 43 sermons on Galatians.39 Often, each year when it came to December 25, Calvin did not take a break from the book he was preaching through but continued unabated, irrespective of how relevant or irrelevant the verses were to Christ’s birth.

Following Calvin’s death in 1564, there was growing pressure from the Genevan population to reinstate holy days, including Christmas. This occurred in the context of a Roman Catholic resurgence that had a significant military dimension to it.

The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), composed by Heinrich Bullinger (Zwingli’s successor in Zurich) and received by many Reformed churches, did not disapprove of Christmas, leaving it as a matter of liberty of conscience for churches to decide.

Theodore Beza (Calvin’s successor in Geneva who visited Zurich to liaise with Bullinger in compiling the Confession) wrote to Knox, requesting Scottish approval for the Confession. The General Assembly in Scotland replied with a letter of “general” approval. Nevertheless, the

Assembly could scarcely refrain from mentioning, with regard to what is written in the 24th chapter of the aforesaid Confession concerning the “festival of our Lord’s nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, ascension, and sending the Holy Ghost upon his disciples,” that these festivals at the present time obtain no place among us; for we dare not religiously celebrate any other feast-day than what the divine oracles prescribed.40

The Dutch Reformed churches had been in the habit of keeping Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide (Pentecost) as days of religious worship. The Provincial Synod of Dort, 1574, enjoined the churches to do this no longer, but to be satisfied with Sundays only for divine service. One common factor that the Reformers constantly had to address was the attitude of the populace and the secular governments, who desired and stipulated respectively that certain feast days such as Christmas had to be observed. This often was not the preference of the church, but the church had to accommodate itself to the secular authority (another upshot of the unnatural relationship between church and state created by Rome).

In April 1605, the two-hundred strong Genevan Council requested the Company of Pastors to clarify their view respecting Christmas reinstatement. The Company responded by rejecting any such reinstatement and appealing to the happy memory of Calvin. They warned that the reinstatement of religious festivals would cause scandal and give the impression that Geneva was sliding back toward the Papal Church.41

This tension over holy days is evidenced by the following quote from the Dutch Calvinist theologian, Gisbert Voetius (1589–1676), in 1659 on Christmas and Good Friday:

Such articles are not characteristic or intrinsic or voluntary impulses proceeding from the heart of the church; but occasional, extrinsic (just as an eclipse is a characteristic phenomenon of the moon), imposed from the outside, burdensome to the churches, in and of themselves and in an absolute sense unwelcome. Synods were summoned, compelled and coerced to receive, bring in and admit these articles, as in the manner of a transaction, in order to prevent worse disagreeable and bad situations. . . .

Synods did not willingly furnish or institute [the annual observance of days] because they saw in them a better way or more edification. But they were instituted because of the necessity and imposition of them by the magistrate and the people, when after all attempts at stopping the observances, and the decree of Synod of 1574 to lay them aside, at a certain point of time they were not able to abrogate them—a fact they admitted in 1578.42

Francis Turretin (1623–1687), the acclaimed Reformed theologian in Geneva did not oppose Christmas, adopting a similar view to Bullinger. Both on the continent and in Britain, a struggle was emerging in Protestantism between those who viewed holy days as positively unscriptural and those who viewed them as convenient. The Anglican Church (in large part an artificial creation by Henry VIII to facilitate the success of his marital aspirations) also retained Christmas. As we noted in the Lutheran excursus above, although it developed a Protestant theology, the Anglican Church kept much of Roman Catholic liturgy, including festivals celebrating aspects of Christ’s life and the feast days of many saints. It gave special emphasis to the celebration of Christmas. In a subsequent chapter, we focus more closely on the attitude to Christmas in the church in Britain. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced many Christmas hymns in German. Among the most famous is, “Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen” (“All My Heart This Night Rejoices”), which was written by Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676). In addition, music by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), and Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) was adapted and used in Christmas carols. As an aside, the term “carol” is derived from Latin and from the old French “carole” meaning a circle-dance. In the Middle Ages, the use of these dance songs expanded in the religious realm as processional songs at Roman Catholic festivals. Their use fell into sharp decline following the Reformation, until being revived again in the nineteenth century by prominent composers.

In colonial America, the practice of Christmas all depended on the origin of the settlers. Those from Puritan England banned it and so it was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. The ban by the Pilgrims was only revoked in 1681 by an English governor and it was not until the 1850s that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region. In contrast, other parts such as New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, that were predominantly Moravian, openly kept the festival.

Rev. Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 the metamorphoses of the pagan holiday into a Christian one, in a pamphlet he published criticizing Christmas in his own day, A Testimony against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs Now Practiced by Some in New England. During the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century, most New England congregations used the so-called Bay Psalm Book, a rhymed version of the Old Testament Psalms, with additional hymns taken from various biblical sources (this was the first book published in New England). None of these hymns dealt with the Christmas story. By the 1750s, however, the Bay Psalm Book had largely been replaced in New England churches by a pair of new verse translations of the Psalms, both of which contained Christmas hymns. Between 1760 and 1799, at least thirty different Christmas songs were published in New England. Yet Christmas was still not that popular in colonial America in comparison to parts of Europe, especially Germany and Bohemia/Moravia (modern Czech Republic). This was illustrated during the American Revolution of 1765–1783. The British had hired thirty thousand troops from the Hesse region of Germany to increase their military might. On December 26, 1776, George Washington launched a major offensive against Hessian troops in New Jersey. Central to the choice of the date to attack was the belief that the German troops would be intoxicated and drowsy after their zealous celebrations of the previous day!

17. Cheyne, Encyclopædia Biblica, 3:351, n. 1.

18. Tertullian, On Idolatry, ch. 14.

19. Origen, Against Celsus, vol. 4, 8:32.

20. Origen, “Homily Eight,” 156.

21. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, sec. 120.

22. “Part 12: Commemorations of the Martyrs,” The Chronography of 354 AD, www.tertullian.org.

23. Ambrose, De Virginibus.

24. Chrysostom, del Solst. Et Æquin, II, 118.

25. Armitage, History of Baptists, 308.

26. Finucane, “Waldensians,” 316.

27. Pastor, History of the Popes, 4:16, 20.

28. Kertzer, Popes Against the Jews, 74.

29. Luther, “Open Letter to the Christian Nobility,” 127.

30. www.reformedonline.com/uploads/1/5/0/3/15030584/chapter_1_christmas.pdf.

31. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company, 125.

32. Ibid.

33. Hughes, Register of the Company of Pastors, 66.

34. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company, 125.

35. Nichols, Corporate Worship, 100.

36. Calvin, Selected Works, 5:299–300 (no known relation to Bern’s Reformer Bernhold Heller referred to earlier).

37. Ibid., vol. 6, part 3, 162–69.

38. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company, 301.

39. Old, Worship, 75.

40. Knox, Works, 6:547. See “Excursus on Geneva and Zurich” in the penultimate chapter “Twelve Reasons Justifying the Endorsement of Christmas.”

41. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company, 127.

42. Voetius, De Sabbatho et Festis, app. 2.