The Religious Observance of Christmas.
In recent years there has been an extraordinary change in the attitude of Presbyterian Scotland to the religious observance of Christmas. This festival, which has no scriptural command for its observance, was one of the feast days mentioned in the Articles of Perth (1618), which were cast out of the Scottish Church by the famous reforming Assembly of Glasgow in 1638. The proceedings were concluded with the historic utterance of Alexander Henderson, the Moderator: “We have now cast down the walls of Jericho: let him that rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel, the Bethelite.” Christ’s birth is nowhere commanded to be observed in Scripture, marvellous though that event was. On the other hand, an express injunction makes the commemoration of His death obligatory on Christians until He come again.
Attitude of Presbyterians to Christmas.
In the First Book of Discipline, among things declared to be repugnant to Christ’s Evangel and “damnable to man’s salvation,” is mentioned the “keeping of holy days of certain saints, commanded by man, such as the Papists have invented, as the Feasts of the Apostles, Martyrs, Virgin, Christmas, Epiphany, Purification, and other fond Feasts of our Lady.” The Westminster divines, in their Directory, say that “there is no day commanded in Scripture to be kept holy under the Gospel but the Lord’s Day, which is the Christian Sabbath. Festival days, vulgarly called holy-days, having no warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued.” In 1638 Alexander Henderson spoke of Pasche [Easter] and Yule [Christmas] as days of men’s institution. David Dickson also spoke against the custom of observing Christmas, and the Assembly were emphatic in their condemnation. The position taken up by the Assembly of 1638 was confirmed by the Act of Assembly (1645), censuring the observers of Yule day, and warning is given that the observers of such superstitious days shall be proceeded against and censured. Presbyterian Scotland in her best days showed strong aversion to the observance of such festival days.
The Date of Christ’s Birth.
The weak sentiment that is leading so many to fall in with the religious observance of Christmas is the chief reason for dwelling on a subject that will be somewhat out of date ere these notes appear in print. It is generally thought that the date of Christ’s birth is an undisputed date, but apart altogether from the question of the year, there is the other of the month and the day of the month. Was the month December, and was the day the twenty-fifth? Let us hear what Sir W. M. Ramsay has to say on the point. “Now we must fix more precisely the month of the birth. The sheep were not folded at night, but feeding out in the open country. During great part of the summer, when that is the case, the operations of harvesting and threshing would take up the attention of many people. Those operations take place earlier or later, according to the elevation above the sea, which varies widely in Palestine, and a general movement of the people would probably take place after those operations were completed, and before the preparation of the land for the winter sowing. The natural time would be between August and October. In that time occurred the Feast of Tabernacles. A considerable movement of the Jews from the northern parts towards Jerusalem occurred always at the Feast; and it was natural that a clever ruler like Herod, who paid much attention to the prejudices and customs of the Jews, should make the numbering about the same time as the Feast. The Nativity, then, occurred towards the beginning of October.” If Sir W. M. Ramsay is correct in his contention, the present date used for the observance of Christmas is wrong. And it is further to be observed that chronologists are not agreed as to the date, though there is general agreement that the twenty-fifth of December is the date of a pagan festival.
The 25th of December the Date of a Pagan Festival.
There is no record of the religious observance of Christmas until after the conversion of Constantine, and Möeller in his History of the Christian Church comments on its introduction as follows:—“The need of a special feast of the Birth of Christ developed out of the whole disposition of the Constantinian age, the desire after a solemnization of worship, approximating to traditional heathen views and seeking points of attachment to the life of nature. A historical remembrance of the day of the birth of Christ is nowhere demonstrable, a motive in Jewish festal celebration can only be artificially invented (P. Cassel, Weihnachten, 1861) and is excluded by the late Roman origin of the festival. On the contrary, in Rome, the heathen festal season of the December feasts, viz., the Saturnalia, occurring at the same time, with their remembrances of the Golden Age and their amusements, which abolished in festal joy all distinctions between master and servant, rich and poor, involuntarily suggested themselves. The close of these Saturnalia (17th to 24th December) formed the feast of the Sigillaria, on which children were presented with Sigillaria, little images or dolls of clay, wax, paste, and the like [the origin of Christmas trees]. Added to these were the Brumalia, the day of the unconquered sun, 25th December, regarded as the winter solstice according to the Julian Calender . . . . This origin explains, on the one hand, the interpretation and Christian utilization of the traditional festival, but on the other hand also the tenacious and powerful continuance of heathen views and customs, even under the new Christian etiquette.” Such is the origin of Christmas given by an unbiased historian. Its heathen origin explains the many pagan customs associated with its observance down through the ages. The points of resemblance between Christmas and the heathen Roman festival of 25th December are fully set forth in Hislop’s Two Babylons.
Railway Unrest and Sabbath Labour.
The Times, in a series of articles on the subject of Railway Unrest, has one dealing with the above subject. We may quote a few sentences from the article, and as we are quoting, we leave the word “Sunday,” though objectionable to us.
“The problem of Sunday work upon the railways,” says the writer, “has not played a prominent part in the recent agitation, but it is a factor which should not be ignored, perhaps, in considering the present situation. It would not be quite correct to say that railwaymen are reconciled to Sunday labour by the fact that it is often paid for at increased rates. Undoubtedly, however, the enhanced payment tends to prevent a general outcry against what is regarded at best as a necessary evil. When this work is paid for at ordinary rates it is distinctly unpopular. The attitude of the Union men, at any rate, towards Sunday labour may be inferred from the fact that in the so-called ‘National’ Programme, which was recently published, there is a demand that all work done between midnight on Saturday and midnight on Sunday shall be paid for at ‘double the ordinary rates of pay.’” Here the intention appears to be to penalize or restrict Sunday labour by rendering it more burdensome to the companies.