Note 838 — Chapter XI · THE BEGINNING OF WINTER

Conybeare, Key of Truth, clii-clvii, quoting an Armenian bishop Hippolytus in Bodl. Armen. Marsh 467, f. 338a, ‘as many as were disobedient have divided the two feasts.’ According to the Catechism of the Syrian Doctors in the same MS., Sahak asked Afrem why the churches feast Dec. 25: the teacher replied, ‘The Roman world does so from idolatry, because of the worship of the Sun. And on the 25th of Dec., which is the first of Qanûn; when the day made a beginning out of the darkness they feasted the Sun with great joy, and declared that day to be the nuptials [? ‘natals,’ but cf. p. 241, n. 1] of the Sun. However, when the Son of God was born of the Virgin, they celebrated the same feast, although they had turned from their idols to God. And when their bishops (or primates) saw this, they proceeded to take the Feast of the Birth of Christ, which was on the sixth of January, and placed it there (viz. on Dec. 25). And they abrogated the feast of the Sun, because it (the Sun) was nothing, as we said before.’ Mommsen, C. I. L. i2. 338, quotes to the same effect another Scriptor Syrus (in Assemanus, Bibl. Orient. ii. 164): cf. p. 235. The early apologists (Tertullian, Apol. 16; ad Nationes, i. 13; Origen, contra Celsum, viii. 67) defend Christianity against pagan charges of Sun-worship.