of December. The new feast was about
the same time (440) finally established in Alexandria. The
_quadragesima_ of Epiphany (i.e. the feast of the presentation in the
Temple, or _hupapant[=e]_) continued to be celebrated in Jerusalem on
the 14th of February, forty days after the 6th of January, until the
reign of Justinian. In most other places it had long before been put
back to the 2nd of February to suit the new Christmas. Armenian
historians describe the riots, and display of armed force, without which
Justinian was not able in Jerusalem to transfer this feast from the 14th
to the 2nd of February.

The grounds on which the Church introduced so late as 350-440 a
Christmas feast till then unknown, or, if known, precariously linked
with the baptism, seem in the main to have been the following. (1) The
transition from adult to infant baptism was proceeding rapidly in the
East, and in the West was well-nigh completed. Its natural complement
was a festal recognition of the fact that the divine element was present
in Christ from the first, and was no new stage of spiritual promotion
coeval only with the descent of the Spirit upon him at baptism. The
general adoption of child baptism helped to extinguish the old view that
the divine life in Jesus dated from his baptism, a view which led the
Epiphany feast to be regarded as that of Jesus' spiritual rebirth. This
aspect of the feast was therefore forgotten, and its importance in every
way diminished by the new and rival feast of Christmas. (2) The 4th
century witnessed a rapid diffusion of Marcionite, or, as it was now
called, Manichaean propaganda, the chief tenet of which was that Jesus
either was not born at all, was a mere phantasm, or anyhow did not take
flesh of the Virgin Mary. Against this view the new Christmas was a
protest, since it was peculiarly the feast of his birth in the flesh, or
as a man, and is constantly spoken of as such by the fathers who
witnessed its institution.

In Britain the 25th of December was a festival long before the
conversion to Christianity, for Bede (_De temp. rat._ ch. 13) relates
that "the ancient peoples of the Angli began the year on the 25th of
December when we now celebrate the birthday of the Lord; and the very
night which is now so holy to us, they called in their tongue
_modranecht_ (_modra niht_), that is, the mothers' night, by reason we
suspect of the ceremonies which in that night-long vigil they
performed." With his usual