letter from America
The origins of Christmas celebrations as we tend to experience them are fraught with controversy – and ignorance, too.
It may be that the purported pagan roots of Christmas trees are arguable, but the actual celebration of Christmas goes back much further than Albert’s love for the German Christmas tree. Some say that December 25th was chosen by the early church because it is roughly nine months after the virginal conception. That may well be, but it’s also the case that the date falls on a time when ancient Roman imperial customs celebrated in pagan ways.
The Christian church sought to establish distinctly Christian holidays to take over from the previous pagan holidays. In particular, I have recently discovered through Hughes Oliphant Old’s majestic seven volumes The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, the Cappadocian fathers probably prioritised festal preaching because it gave them an opportunity to underline the doctrinal message of Nicene orthodoxy.
