Actually, I think the fixing of the Annunciation on March 25 probably
predates the fixing of Christmas on Dec. 25. As I recall, the Spring
Equinox was long considered the date of the creation of the world and the
fact that the Jewish passover was tied to the lunar cycle close to the
spring equinox meant that Christ's crucifixion also took place near the
Spring equinox, which the Fathers of the Church thought appropriate: the
redemption of the world took place, both in incarnation and
crucifixion/resurrection at the time of the beginning of the world.
Roland Bainton did his doctoral dissertation on the earliest celebrations
of the nativity and demonstrated that the original celebration of the
nativity was on January 6 in Egypt, i.e., the Eastern Mediterranean. The
December 25 date can only be traced to the 4th c. in the West. But both
January 6 and Dec. 25 are tied to the winter solstice, which, of course,
also had symbolic meaning: at the darkest point of the year the Light
came into the world to redeem the world (came into the world in the form
of seeing the light of day in the flesh, in birth). Bainton investigated
various ancient calendars and showed that the variations in the date of
the winter solstice are tied to slippage over time between astronomical
movements and the historical calendars--i.e,. the same sorts of slippage
that led to the Julian calendar reform shortly before Christ's birth.
I don't have the details at hand and I don't have the title of Bainton's
dissertation at hand, but he published an article summarizing it: "The
Origins of Epiphany" in Bainton, _Early and Medieval Christianity: Collected
Papers in Church History_, vol. 1. Oscar Cullmann also wrote a paper
called "The Origins of Christmas" in Cullmann, _The Early Church_ (sorry,
I don't have more complete citations).
Dennis Martin
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