Hence very likely the introduction of Christmas on December 25 as a
festival of the Birth alone. In the East the concelebration of the two
events continued for some time after Rome had instituted the separate
feast of Christmas. Gradually, however, the Roman use spread: at
Constantinople it was introduced about 380 by the great theologian,
Gregory Nazianzen; at Antioch it appeared in 388, at Alexandria in 432.
The Church of Jerusalem long stood out, refusing to adopt the new feast
till the seventh century, it would seem.{18} One important Church, the
Armenian, knows nothing of December 25, and still celebrates the Nativity
with the Epiphany on January 6.{19} Epiphany in the eastern Orthodox
Church has lost its connection with the Nativity and is now chiefly a
celebration of the Baptism of Christ, while in the West, as every one
knows, it is primarily a celebration of the Adoration by the Magi, an
event commemorated by the Greeks on Christmas Day. Epiphany is, however,
as we shall see, a greater festival in the Greek Church than Christmas.

Such in bare outline is the story of the spread of Christmas as an
independent festival. Its establishment fitly followed the triumph of the
Catholic doctrine of the perfect Godhead or Christ at the Council of
Nicea in 325.

II. The French _Noel_ is a name concerning whose origin there has been
considerable dispute; there can, however, be little doubt that it is the
same word as the Provencal _Nadau_ or _Nadal_, |23| the Italian
_Natale_, and the Welsh _Nadolig_, all obviously derived from the Latin
_natalis_, and meaning "birthday." One naturally takes this as referring
to the Birth of Christ, but it may at any rate remind us of another
birthday celebrated on the same date by the Romans of the Empire, that of
the unconquered Sun, who on December 25, the winter solstice according to
the Julian calendar, began to rise to new vigour after his autumnal
decline.

Why, we may ask, did the Church choose December 25 for the celebration of
her Founder's Birth? No one now imagines that the date is supported by a
reliable tradition; it is only one of various guesses of early Christian
writers. As a learned eighteenth-century Jesuit{20} has pointed out,
there is not a single month in the year to which the Nativity has not
been assigned by some writer or other. The real reason for the choice of
the day most probably was, that upon it fell the pagan festival just
mentioned.

The _Dies Natali