Christmas
the festival of the Nativity of Christ observed by the Christian Church yearly on the 25th of December. Augustine considered the festivals, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, As cension Day, and Whitsuntide, as the on'y festivals which had an Apostolic origin and the sanction of a general council. Christmas he deemed to be of later origin and lesser authority. When the first efforts were made to fix the period of the year when the advent took place, there were, as we learn from Clement of Alexandria, advocates for the 20th of May and for the 20th or 21st of April.
The Oriental Christians generally were of opinion that both the birth and baptism of Jesus took place on the 6th of January. Julian I., Bishop of Rome from A. D. 337-352, contended for the 25th of December, a view to which the Eastern Church ultimately came round, while the Church of the West adopted from their brethren in the East the view that the baptism was on the 6th of January.
When the festival was at length placed in December, it afforded a substitute to the various nations who had observed a festival of rejoicing that the shortest day of the year had passed, besides spanning over the great interval between Whitsuntide of one year and Good Friday of the next. Coming to the Roman Christian converts, in lieu of the saturnalia, to which they had been accustomed while yet they were heathens, its purity became sullied almost at the first by revelry which had crept into it from this source.
Similarly the Yule log, the mistletoe, etc., among English-speaking peoples, are relics of Druidism. See CHRISTIAN ERA.