Christmas

When it comes to Christmas, no one celebrates it better than the Filipinos. Our country is also known for celebrating the longest Yuletide Season in the world. In fact, we already feel that Christmas is in the air, on the onset of the “Ber” months, starting on September 1 known also as Jose Mari Chan Day. Chan, is an Ilonggo (born in Iloilo City, 1945) singer and songwriter who popularized “Christmas In Our Hearts” (1990), a significantly popular iconic Christmas song.

Our Christmas here, officially ends on the Feast of Epiphany (Three Kings) on the first Sunday after the New Year.

Christmas Day every December 25 is considered as the most celebrated holiday in the world, an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ and observed by billions of people worldwide as a religious and cultural holiday.

In our country, the celebration is primarily a family affair. It is associated with gift-giving, caroling, parol, the traditional Noche Buena during the Christmas Eve, the nine-day Misa de Gallo, the puto-bumbong (a popular delicacy which is a purple glutinous rice cake sold during the season), the Manita-Manito exchanging gifts, etc.

In modern times, the holiday become more exciting with the giant Christmas trees in different towns and cities, Grand Christmas Sales by malls and supermarkets, the much awaited Christmas bonus by workers, PEI and SRI incentives by government employees, etc.

When it comes to pomp and pageantry during Christmas, Filipinos are indeed, hard to beat, since ours is the longest and the grandest celebration of the year.

But when was really the first Christmas? And how early Christians celebrated it?

History said that it was Sextus Julius Africanus (born c. AD 180, Jerusalem—died c. 250), first Christian historian known to produce a universal chronology, identified December 25 as the birth of Jesus Christ.

Africanus’ was known for his work Chronographiai (221), a five-volume treatise on sacred and profane history from the Creation (which he placed at 5499 BC) to AD 221. Relying on the Bible as the basis of his calculations, he incorporated and synchronized Egyptian and Chaldaean chronologies, Greek mythology, and Judaic history with Christianity, which raised the reputation of early Christianity by placing it within a historical context.

Around 350 A.D., the Catholic Church, through its Supreme Pontiff, Pope Julius I (Pope from 337-352 A.D.) declared December 25 as the official date of the birth of Jesus Christ. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan, Saturnalia festival and Christianizing of the dies solis invicti nati (“day of the birth of the unconquered sun”), a popular holiday in the Roman Empire that celebrated the winter solstice as a symbol of the resurgence of the sun, the casting away of winter and the heralding of the rebirth of spring and summer.

It was called then as the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century.

Another explanation is that December 25 became the date of Jesus’ birth by a priori reasoning that identified the spring equinox as the date of the creation of the world and the fourth day of creation, when the light was created, as the day of Jesus’ conception (i.e., March 25). December 25, nine months later, then became the date of Jesus’ birth. For a long time the celebration of Jesus’ birth was observed in conjunction with his baptism, celebrated January 6.

Christmas began to be widely celebrated with a specific liturgy in the 9th century but did not attain the liturgical importance of either Good Friday, the other two major Christian holidays.

The English term Christmas (“mass on Christ’s day”) is of fairly recent origin. The earlier term Yule may have derived from the Germanic jōl or the Anglo-Saxon geōl, which referred to the feast of the winter solstice. The corresponding terms in other languages— Navidad in Spanish, Natale in Italian, Noël in French—all probably denote nativity. The German word Weihnachten denotes “hallowed night.” Since the early 20th century, Christmas has also been a secular family holiday, observed by Christians and non-Christians alike, devoid of Christian elements, and marked by an increasingly elaborate exchange of gifts.