Christmas With The Donatists

“You know Polycarp and Victor, Arius and Athanasius,
Origen and Clement, Constantine and Eusebius.
But do you recall the most famous North African schismatics of all…?”

You should! If you want to understand how we got Christmas on December 25th. They are -- The Donatists.

THE WHO?

If you want to know who the Donatists were, there are several excellent resources online. I will summarize for you.

The Donatists were Christians in north Africa, centered in Carthage, known for being uncompromising in moral and liturgical practice.
During Emperor Diocletian's Great Persecution (303-313), some clergy gave in to pressure, surrendering sacred texts or even performing pagan sacrifices, while others denied their faith. When the church allowed several of these lapsed clergy to do penance and return to their offices, a large number of people in north Africa strongly objected, claiming every sacrament these bishops performed was invalid from then onward, and the entire church was impure because of it. They formally split from the church in 311. Donatists take their name from Donatus of Carthage, who was called to account by the Council of Arles in 314 for being a schismatic, but he refused to accept any decision against himself or his fellows. Augustine wrote against the Donatists several times, bringing us valuable clues to their beliefs. They eventually disappeared in the 7th century after the Muslims invaded.

There you go! Now you know who the Donatists were. A bit.

I bet you are wondering what does any of that have to do with Christmas. Ah! This is an unusual side quest, but it has some good drops. Today, we are going to look at the Donatists, and the Philocalian Calendar, then compare the two leading theories of how Christmas came about in the first place so we can see which fits the evidence best. The Donatists are a fine example of how history can get complicated, and how we need to deeply investigate the very nooks and crannies of history to understand how things actually progressed rather than relying on the old "I don't like that, so it's pagan" gut instinct.
Don't worry. I am going to do my best to uncomplicate this for you. Keep it simple.

The key to how the Donatists relate to Christmas is this: when they split off, they retained every tradition which they had at the time of the split, but they refused to adopt any new traditions from the main church after that point.

Let's unwrap that package.

THE FREEZE

Think of the Donatists like a time capsule buried sometime between 305 and 311. The Donatists split off and refused to take anything further from the rest of Christendom from then on. Of course, they innovated on their own over time, but adopted nothing from the wider church. The Donatists were like a snapshot of the church at the opening of the fourth century. I am going to call this "the Donatist freeze".
...and it looks like they observed Christmas on December 25.

It all comes down to hints left to us by Augustine. Augustine was a leading bishop in north Africa from 395-430. He wrote against the Donatists regularly. In two separate sermons on Epiphany (Sermon 202 and the 412 AD Epiphany Sermon), Augustine mentioned how the Donatists refused to observe Epiphany. He composed multiple sermons on Christmas, yet nowhere does he similarly criticize the Donatists for refusing Christmas.

This is a very intriguing factoid. It causes many leading scholars to comment.

"Since in North Africa as at Rome it seems certain that Christmas was established before the Epiphany, one is left with the strong sense that the Donatists did celebrate Christmas."
-Thomas Talley, "Origins of the Liturgical Year", p.87

Strong impressions are not definite statements, but if such an expert and several others besides are convinced then who am I to object? 

"The Donatists, as Augustine pointed out in the early 5th century, celebrated Christmas on December 25 as opposed to January 6 (when many of the Eastern churches celebrated the birth of Christ)."
-W.H.C. Frend "The Donatist Church", p.336

Frend, who had a particular expertise in the Donatists, comes across more confidently than he ought, but that was his style. He uses a more academic tone in other places.

Since the entire business came to a head with a formal schism in 311 AD, many scholars set the freeze in that year. But I argue it should be earlier. The formal split was the natural end of the scandal, not the beginning of it. I argue the freeze happened immediately after the Persecution ended in north Africa, from the time the lapsed bishops were first restored and the Donatists began seeing the rest of the church as tainted. The Persecution ended in Carthage in 305 AD (but continued on elsewhere until about 313), and that is the first year for the reconciliations in that region. So, that is the year I prefer. To be cautious, let's give a range, from 305-311. Talley mentions there are some who agree with this.

"In such a case, that festival [Christmas] must antedate the Donatist schism, and the date of its establishment would thus be earlier than 311. Indeed, some have supposed that its observance could date from as early as 300 or even earlier..."
-Thomas Talley, "Origins of the Liturgical Year", p.87

Interesting, no? Now, let's organize those new thoughts of yours into three very important points:

1. Christmas took time to develop and spread. Christmas likely took years to develop from a novelty to a fully formed feast, spreading from church to church.
   
2. It couldn't have happened during the Persecution. No major new tradition could have started and become widespread during the Persecution. The Persecution was technically still ongoing until 313.
3. It couldn't have happened after the Persecution. There wasn't enough time between the Persecution ending in Carthage in 305 and the split in 311 for Christmas to develop in north Africa.

Taken together, these points about the Donatist freeze strongly imply that the December 25th date for the nativity developed into a formal feast before the Persecution began in 303 AD.

Now do you see why the Donatists are important?

Because the Donatist freeze (305-311) happened during the Great Persecution of Diocletian (303-313), we can see Christmas likely became a feast in the west very close to 300 AD. And it is reasonable to conclude the ongoing Persecution worked to hinder both the spread of Christmas from the western church to the eastern, and the spread of Epiphany from the eastern church to the western. Epiphany never made it to the Donatists in northwest Africa before they split away, so they rejected it.

We're not done yet. Let's take a look at another piece of evidence so the Donatists can help build our case even further.

THE CALENDAR

The Philocalian Calendar contains the oldest extant written record of December 25 as the birth of Jesus Christ. The Calendar has several parts to it. The part that ties Jesus to December 25 is a list of martyrs called the Depositio Martyrum (Commemoration of the Martyrs), which was written in 336 AD. This is a couple decades after the freeze. Some people think because this is the first written record then this must be when Christmas began. But as you can see from the Donatists, it is not the only piece to this puzzle.

In another part of the Philocalian Calendar, on the date of December 25, it records an event called "Natalis Invicti". One calendar, one date, two very different events. (See "The Plain Truth About December 25" for more.)

For today's post, it's not just what the Philocalian Calendar says that is important, but how it says it.
It orders the entire church year around that December 25 date. The Calendar strongly implies the liturgical year started and ended at Christmas time.

"That calendar ran, as did the Depositio Martyrum, from December 25 to December 25, the date to which the martyrs' list assigns the nativity of Christ at Bethlehem. From 336, then, we may say that at Rome the nativity of Christ on December 25 marked the beginning of the liturgical year."
-Thomas Talley, "Origins of the Liturgical Year", p.85

This means that when the Commemoration of the Martyrs was compiled in 336 AD, Christmas was already in existence, it was fully accepted at Rome, and it was in motion to become the crux of the entire liturgical year in the west. To this day, the liturgical year in the Latin West starts at Advent - four Sundays before Christmas.

So, why go through these details about the calendar? Because the calendar shows us that by 336, Christmas had already become the pivot point of the liturgical year in the west. That has always seemed odd to me, like we are missing key information here. A thing cannot simply pop into existence this well formed and important. This didn't happen overnight. It took time for Christmas to gain this quality. Therefore, the Philocalian Calendar brings Christmas well prior to 336. But it's all so sudden. What happened before 336? The Donatist freeze. And this brings it back even further to the turn of that century. Together, they make a compelling case for Christmas developing from a theory to a feast quite early on.

Many people mistakenly think the Philocalian Calendar is the start of the Christmas record. Hopefully, now you see that is not the case.

And so one naturally wonders - what comes before the Donatists?

DUELING THEORIES

I want to emphasize we are deep in speculation here. There are solid facts involved, sure enough, but we are using them to extrapolate to conclusions. It's not like we are pulling from Irish folklore to conclude Halloween comes from Samhain or anything like that, but I do not want to leave you with the impression that things are definite as the rising sun. These are very strong circumstantial arguments, but circumstantial nonetheless.

Now we come to the boss fight. What led up to the Donatists? We have two main theories of how the December 25th date of Christmas came about to begin with.

The first theory is what I usually call "pagan co-opt" because I like to keep things simple. This theory states Christians took over Natalis Invicti from the pagans. This theory was popularized by the scholars of the German History of Religions School back in the late 1800s. One of the main architects was Franz Cumont. According to these scholars, practically everything in Christianity was a pagan co-opt, including Christianity itself. Scholars often refer to this option as the History of Religions Theory (HRT). This is the preferred theory of Armstrongism.

The second theory is what most people call Calculation Theory (CT). This theory states Christian scholars came to the December 25 date on their own, through an investigation of historical dates. This theory was popularized in the late 1900s. It is based on the discovery of manuscripts from Christian authors from the second through fifth centuries. CT claims early Christian thinkers were trying to find the date of the crucifixion (and every other Passover in history back to the 4th day of creation). There were various dates proposed for the crucifixion, but Hippolytus championed March 25, and that one caught on. (I will tell you about another date in a future post, coming soon.) Now, you add in an unusual idea from the Jews where multiple important events happen on the same date. These are called "integral years" or "integral ages". In the minds of the ancient Jews, important people were believed to have been conceived or born on the same date on which they died. I know this sounds odd, but you must understand that, whether it's true or not, it is built on quite a lot of evidence. So, you take the crucifixion on March 25, add in integral ages, and you get Jesus being conceived on March 25. Nine months later you land on December 25.

Note: CT is not trying to determine if December 25 actually is the correct date (and neither am I). It only explains how the December 25 date was chosen. It sounds odd, but history is odd.
Also, no matter which theory we choose, the origin of Christmas goes back to before 300 AD. 

Those are the two main theories on how we got to December 25. Now, let's run those theories past the Donatists.

The HRT stands or falls on these two things:
1) December 25 was a popular annual pagan holiday in Rome, and,
2) Christmas on December 25 started well after Natalis Invicti.
There is not a shred of evidence for #1 (if it weren't for the Philocalian Calendar, we wouldn't have known it existed at all), and #2 is complicated by the Donatists.

The Donatists observing Christmas on December 25 pushes the observance of Christmas back prior to the Great Persecution. And we know Christmas took years to develop, but we don't know how many years, so let's just arbitrarily assign it to 300 AD in Carthage. 300 AD is merely a conservative estimate that tries to be fair to both theories, and even then the HRT timeline collapses.

Think about it.
If Aurelian actually did start a Sol festival in 274 AD, and we plug in our date of 300 AD for the Donatists to accept Christmas, that is 26 years at the most. That is not nearly reasonable enough time for a festival to get so popular the Christians felt they had to co-opt the date, and for that new Christian festival to propagate around the west.

Christmas did not begin at the Donatist freeze. December 25 Nativity didn't spring up fully formed, like Athena, in all places at once. That took time. We must subtract some unknown amount of time from 300 AD to account for the development and spread of the Christmas tradition.

The history of the nativity on December 25 can go no earlier than Hippolytus in 211 AD (since he provides the earliest known reference to that date, as mentioned earlier), and no later than 300 AD (given the evidence from the Donatists). This window of time does damage to the foundation of the HRT. Speaking for myself, personally, I feel it makes the HRT completely unworkable.

There is only one theory that can account for the Donatists, and that is the Calculation Theory. CT is the better explanation, and the Donatists emphasize that wonderfully.
I don't want to get into this point here, but only CT can handle Epiphany as well as Christmas, and for the exact same reason. That is also a very strong mark in its favor.

CONCLUSION

The Donatists offer a revealing glimpse into the clouded history of Christmas because their apparent observance of a December 25 Christmas gives clues to when the date developed from a theory into a widely-accepted feast, and the timing rules out the pagan co-opt theory. I suppose you could say, Christmas with the Donatists is a MASTER KEY unlocking the mystery of those ages.

We've seen how the Commemoration of the Martyrs pushes Christmas well prior to 336 AD, and "the Donatist freeze" takes Christmas back to roughly 300 AD. We know Christmas took time to develop and spread, so the actual origin of the feast goes back further still. And the best explanation for the genesis of Christmas is the Calculation Theory.

"We don’t know exactly where, or why or how they got the date, though our guesses are probably not too far from the mark."
-Susan K. Roll, "Towards the Origins of Christmas", p.223.

There are so many details to this story which I have glossed over in order to bring you today's post. I want you to understand how things progressed in general without getting bogged down in the very thorny and complex details that I so adore.

I want to re-emphasize the speculation going on here. Solid facts are being used to reach uncertain conclusions. That's the rule of this game. Probabilities. But let us bear this absolutely solid fact in mind - regardless of how far back we can push its origins, the Feast of the Nativity is a creature of the mid-to-late 300s. If you want to know more about the development of Christmas through the centuries, I would like to recommend you read our series "Christmas Eras Tour".

************

It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

************