reticence about matters pagan or not
orthodox, Bede abstains from recording who the mothers were and what the
ceremonies. In 1644 the English puritans forbad any merriment or
religious services by act of Parliament, on the ground that it was a
heathen festival, and ordered it to be kept as a fast. Charles II.
revived the feast, but the Scots adhered to the Puritan view.

Outside Teutonic countries Christmas presents are unknown. Their place
is taken in Latin countries by the _strenae_, French _etrennes_, given
on the 1st of January; this was in antiquity a great holiday, wherefore
until late in the 4th century the Christians kept it as a day of fasting
and gloom. The setting up in Latin churches of a Christmas _creche_ is
said to have been originated by St Francis.

AUTHORITIES.--K.A.H. Kellner, _Heortologie_ (Freiburg im Br., 1906),
with Bibliography; Hospinianus, _De festis Christianorum_ (Genevae,
1574); Edw. Martene, _De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus_, iii. 31
(Bassani, 1788); J.C.W. Augusti, _Christl. Archaeologie_, vols. i. and
v. (Leipzig, 1817-1831); A.J. Binterim, _Denkwuerdigkeiten_, v. pt. i.
p. 528 (Mainz, 1825, &c.); Ernst Friedrich Wernsdorf, _De originibus
Solemnium Natalis Christi_ (Wittenberg, 1757, and in J.E. Volbeding,
_Thesaurus Commentationum_, Lipsiae, 1847); Anton. Bynaeus, _De Natali
Jesu Christi_ (Amsterdam, 1689); Hermann Usener,
_Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_ (Bonn, 1889); Nik. Nilles,
S.J., _Kalendarium Manuale_ (Innsbruck, 1896); L. Duchesne, _Origines
du culte chretien_ (3e ed., Paris, 1889). (F. C. C.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the _Abhandlungen der saechsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_
(1850). Note that in A.D. 1, Dec. 25 was a Sunday and not a Friday.

[2] In a fragment preserved by an Armenian writer, Ananias of Shirak.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND, a British possession under the government of the
Straits Settlements, situated in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean
(in 10 deg. 25' S., 105 deg. 42' E.), about 190 m. S. of Java. The island
is a quadrilateral with hollowed sides, about 12 m. in greatest length and
9 in extreme breadth. It is probably the only tropical island that had
never been inhabited by man before the European settlement. When the
first settlers arrived, in 1897, it was covered with a dense forest of
great trees and luxuriant under-shrubbery. The settlement in Flying Fish
Cove now numbers some 250 inhabitants, consisting of E