The tradition of the lighting of lamps or candles leading up to Christmas is called Advent. As we begin the Advent tradition at Mountain Springs this weekend, the blog of Bill Petro, nicknamed “Doc Rock,” is appropriate for a guest blog this month. The “History of the Holidays” is written from Doc Rock’s historical insights.
Bill and I have been friends for 30 years, since we served together in ministry with Campus Crusade. In the intervening years, he has been involved in Information Technology with a number of high-tech companies and now specializes in cloud computing and virtualization. During all these years and more he has been studying and teaching history, and in the last couple of decades been publishing his articles online where they can be found at billpetro.com…
History of the Holidays
The Advent Season — Advent means the “coming” of the Christ Child — is marked by the four Sundays before Christmas and is celebrated in the church calendar as one the most festive seasons of the year.
As we shall see in this series — many of the traditions, customs, and stories of the Advent Season have Christian roots while others have non-Christian sources. Some are legendary, and others are firmly rooted in history.
It is perhaps ironic that the actual date for the Nativity or birth of the Christ Child, which our Western calendar system is based upon, is not known with certainty. Indeed, the Feast of Christmas was not an early festival for the church, like Resurrection Sunday (Easter) was, and in fact did not see general observance until the 4th century. The western church did not agree upon the current date of December 25 until the early part of the 5th century under Pope Leo I, though this date for Christmas was first mentioned in the 4th century illuminated manuscript the Chronography of 354.
Some historians, especially in the Eastern Church, suggested that the date of Christmas was derived as 9 months after the Annunciation (to Mary) which is celebrated on March 25. This would place it on December 25. Many 18th century scholars, including Isaac Newton, argued that this date was picked to supplant the pagan year-end holiday Saturnalia that was celebrated by the Romans and many of whose customs survive today: decorations of evergreen, holly, mistletoe, feasting and the exchange of gifts.
December 25, the ancient date for their Winter Solstice, was celebrated as the birthday of the “unconquerable sun” or dies natalis solis invicti when the sun’s transit was in the lowest point on the horizon with the shortest “day” of the year and then with longer days coming began its transit northward. Under the Christian calendar the 25th was to become known as the birth of the unconquerable Son.
- Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
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