the Christian Dies Natalis, Christmas Day. Attempts have been made to ratify this date as matter of history, but no valid nor even consistent early Christian tradition vouches for it. The real solar origin of the festival is clear from the writings of the Fathers after its institution. In religious symbolism of the material and spiritual sun, Augustine and Gregory of Nyassa discourse on the glowing light and dwindling darkness that follow the Nativity, while Leo the Great, among whose people the earlier solar meaning of the festival evidently remained in strong remembrance, rebukes in a sermon the pestiferous persuasion, as he calls it, that this solemn day is to be honoured not for the birth of Christ, but for the rising, as they say, of the new sun.[1] As for modern memory of the sun-rites of mid-winter, Europe recognizes Christmas as a primitive solar festival by bonfires which our 'yule-log,' the 'souche de Noël,' still keeps in mind; while the adaptation of ancient solar thought to Christian allegory is as plain as ever in the Christmas service chant, 'Sol novus oritur.'[2] The solar Christmas festival has its pendant at Midsummer. The summer solstice was the great season of fire-festivals throughout Europe, of bonfires on the heights, of dancing round and leaping through the fires, of sending blazing fire-wheels to roll down from the hills into the valleys in sign of the sun's descending course. These ancient rites attached themselves in Christendom to St. John's Eve.[3] It seems as though the same train of symbolism which had adapted the midwinter festival to the Nativity, may have suggested the dedication of the midsummer festival to John the Baptist, in clear allusion to his words, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.'
- ↑ See Pauly, 'Real-Encyclop.' s.v. 'Sol;' Petavius, 'Juliani Imp. Opera,' 290-2, 277. Bingham, 'Antiquities of Christian Church,' book xx. ch. iv.; Neander, 'Church Hist.' vol. iii. p. 437; Beausobre, 'Hist. de Manichée,' vol. ii. p. 691; Gibbon, ch. xxii.; Creuzer, 'Symbolik,' vol. i. p. 761, &c.
- ↑ Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 593, 1223. Brand, 'Popular Antiquities,' vol. i. p. 467. Monnier, 'Traditions Populaires,' p. 188.
- ↑ Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 583; Brand, vol. i. p. 298; Wuttke, pp. 14, 140. Beausobre, l.c.
