10 The Date In the early Church, Christmas was not celebrated as a major feast. The first evidence of the Church attempting to put a date on the day of Christ’s birth comes from 200 AD, when theologians in Alexandria decided it was the 20th of May. By the 380s, the Church in Rome was attempting to unite the various regions in using December 25th as the universal feast day, and eventually that is the day that stuck. As so often was the case in the early Church, the influence of the pagan feasts of Rome is seen, because December 25 was the festival for the birth of the sun. St Cyprian makes mention of this: “O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born . . . Christ should be born.” 9 The Nativity Scene Everyone knows who Saint Francis is – the famed saint who had an apparent miraculous control over animals, and who travelled to the Middle East to convert the Muslims – offering to be thrown int...
FOLKLORE, FACTS AND FEATURES ABOUT HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS AROUND THE WORLD