The Quartodecimans and Epiphany

Back in early 2024, I did a series of posts on a group commonly known as the Quartodecimans. The Quartodecimans were Christians, mainly from the east, who are best known because they emphasized that the Last Supper should be observed annually, on the date of Nisan 14 whenever possible. This led to the "Quartodeciman Controversy". I started out that series by saying any good discussion on Easter ought to mention the Quartodecimans. And it should!
But I bet you didn't know any good discussion on Christmas should mention them, too.

The Quartodecimans celebrated Christmas?? Well, perhaps some did, but not overall. They celebrated the nativity of our Lord, yes, but not usually on December 25 as Christmas. Instead, they celebrated it on January 6 as Epiphany.

Let's go on an adventure and see how the Quartodecimans were involved with Epiphany.

TOOLBOX

There are some things you are going to need to know in order to fully understand today's post. Tools to work with, so to speak. I usually assume people read my other articles, but I will summarize to save you time. Skip this if you're already familiar.

The first thing you will need to know is Epiphany.

Epiphany started in the eastern church as a memorial of our Lord's incarnation and birth. Same idea as Christmas, but on a different date. Later, it was decided Christmas would honor the nativity, and Epiphany became the day to honor major events of Jesus' life including the arrival of the Magi, His baptism, and the wedding at Cana. That's how things are to this day in Catholic and Orthodox churches, but Epiphany has been mostly abandoned by Protestants (which is why I'm explaining it in the first place).

The second thing you will need to know is "integral ages".
The ancient Jews had an unusual idea where multiple important events happen on the same date. These are called "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.

The third thing you will need to know is Calculation Theory (CT).
CT is a theory about how the date for the nativity of Christ was originally chosen. According to CT, Christian scholars came to the date on their own through calculations. They first determined the date of His crucifixion, then used integral ages to reach the birth. Hippolytus championed March 25, and that date caught on in the west. In the east, however, the popular date was April 6. Today's post is mostly going to be about this April 6 date.
Now, you add in integral ages, and you get Jesus being conceived on a certain date (March 25 / April 6), then nine months later comes His nativity (December 25 / January 6).

Now that you are fully armed and operational, let's dive into April 6.

PIECES OF APRIL

I am going to give you scholarly references but I'm going to try my best to explain things plainly.

In the early 200s AD, calendar issues were taking the spotlight. Many Christians were attempting to determine when the crucifixion occurred, and for several reasons. Everyone knew Passover was Nisan 14, yet it was becoming clear there was an issue with the Jewish calendar - Nisan 14 was no longer reliably anchored to the start of spring following the Bar Kokhba revolt. Correcting Nisan 14, then converting that into the other calendars in the empire, was quite difficult. At the same time, there were theological debates that needed answers, such as the human and divine natures of Jesus. And then, there were natural curiosities, such as Hippolytus trying to find every Passover back to the 4th day of creation. The answer to all of these included calculating dates.

We know Christian scholars were calculating dates because we have the written evidence. In the west, Tertullian and Hippolytus converted Nisan 14 to March 25 in the Julian calendar.
That is not how they did it in the east.

"In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6 - the eastern date for Christmas."
-Biblical Archaeology Review, "How December 25 Became Christmas", 7-10-2025. 

Please allow me to explain this more plainly.
Eastern Christians used a completely different calendar than the Jews or the western Christians - the Macedonian lunar calendar. They took the idea behind Nisan 14 (the fourteenth day of the first Jewish spring month) and replaced it with their equivalent (the fourteenth day of their own first spring month). Thus, Nisan 14 was traded for Artemisios 14. This was not a date-to-date swap, but an idea-to-idea swap. (Artemesios 14 and Nissan 14 would not usually be on the same day, but they are always the 14th day of the first spring month.)
Later, others converted Artemisios 14 into April 6 in the Julian calendar. (If you're interested, Thomas Talley explains how that worked on page 8 of his book "Origins of the Liturgical Year". But that's not important right now.)

This is the majority scholarly consensus on what they did. Understand that this is circumstantial evidence. No ancient source explicitly says, "This is what we did." But this is the best reconstruction from the scattered evidence that we do have. Here's how it went:

• Many eastern Christians put Artemisios 14 in place of Nisan 14.
• Artemisios 14 is April 6 in the Julian calendar.
• Observance on Artemisios 14 / April 6 is well attested in regions like Syria and Egypt.
• These regions were known to have populations of Quartodecimans, and it would logically be Quartodecimans who were most interested in Nisan 14 date conversions.
• Besides Quartodecimans, the only other group who might have observed April 6 were the Montanists, but they were relatively few in number, and most agree the Montanists inherited this practice from the Quartodecimans.

Simple and condensed takeaway:
The Artemisios 14 / April 6 date most likely comes from the Quartodecimans.

Now, let's get some source material in here to back this up.

Talley, who got this ball rolling for me in the first place, agrees:

"In both Asia and Cappadocia the concern was not to observe a given Julian date, April 6 or March 25, but to observe the fourteenth day of the first month of spring..."
-Thomas Talley, "Further Light on the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Date of the Annunciation", p. 4

"Although for him [Sozomen] that paschal date of April 6, the old Asian 14 Artemisios, was peculiar to a Montanist group, there is every reason to believe that the early Quartodeciman Christians in Asia had observed the same date..."
-Thomas Talley, "Origins of the Liturgical Year", pp.8-9.

Every reason to believe Quartodecimans were observing Artemisios 14 / April 6? Interesting! Talley is so convinced of this, he calls April 6 "that Quartodeciman date" ("Origins" p. 97).
Talley refers us to Epiphanius. In his book "Panarion", Epiphanius says this about the Quartodeciman beliefs:

"And there is no little dissension in their [the Quartodecimans'] ranks, since some say the fourteenth day of the month [this is the eastern date], but some, the eighth before the Kalends of April [this is the western calculation]."
-Epiphanius of Salamis "Panarion" Quartodecimans 50.7 (374-378 AD). 

Epiphanius is writing about the Quartodecimans here, specifically. This makes it abundantly clear at least some Quartodecimans did observe April 6. But not all Quartodecimans. Some had adopted Hippolytus' date of March 25.

We can list several other names that support these conclusions: Louis Duchesne (Conferences), Hans Lietzmann (A History of the Early Church), Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson (The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity), Andrew McGowan (Ancient Christian Worship), Susan K. Roll (The Feast of the Nativity), Hans Förster (The Celebration of Christ’s Birth in the Early Church), Paul Barnett Simmons (The Origins of Christmas and the Date of Christ's Birth), and of course, reputable online resources like Biblical Archaeology Review.

Here is your simple, condensed takeaway:
Many Quartodecimans were almost certainly observing Artemisios 14 / April 6. But why is that important? Because in the same way March 25 becomes December 25 when integral ages are applied, April 6 becomes January 6 - the date of Epiphany. This means the Quartodecimans are the primary suspects for why we have Epiphany on January 6.

This is clearly Talley's position.

"The same relationship is visible between April 6 and January 6 without any reference (pace Norden!) to the quarter days [solstices and equinoxes]. Rather, these winter dates can both be seen as the result of the same paschal calculation, with the conception/annunciation on March 25 leading to the nativity on December 25 in the West, and the conception/passion on April 6 leading to the nativity on January 6 in the East. [...] The persistence of the April 6 date in the East for the passion, long after the Quartodeciman controversy had been resolved in favor of the Sunday observance, suggests that it was the paschal full moon date of the Asian calendar that underlay the January 6 nativity observance."
-Thomas Talley, "Origins of the Liturgical Year", pp.129. [bold mine]

"As the association of April 6 with the conception would lead to the dating of the nativity on January 6, so such an association of the conception with March 25 would lead to dating the nativity to December 25."
-Thomas Talley, ("Further Light on the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Date of the Annunciation", p. 4. [bold mine]

Other scholars, such as Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson (The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity), agree with Talley that Quartodecimans honored the nativity and did so on Epiphany.

So, although nothing explicitly says this, it very much looks like the Quartodecimans not only observed the nativity of our Lord on Epiphany, but they are the reason why we have Epiphany in the first place. Remember from the Toolbox section: Epiphany started in the eastern church as a memorial of our Lord's incarnation and birth. It started in Quartodeciman strongholds, and it persisted there. They were observing "Christmas" so to speak ...but on Epiphany.

The pagan co-opt theory (also called the History of Religions Theory or HRT) cannot explain both Christmas and Epiphany. Nor can it respond to the abundance of records from the early 200s which plainly show Christians in various places working out these dates. These calculations happened decades before there was any Roman celebration on December 25, and there was no corresponding pagan festival for Epiphany to co-opt. Epiphany demonstrates the Nativity was not some generic solstice co-opt, either. Compare that to the grand total of zero ancient records positively demonstrating a pagan co-opt.

HRT cannot overcome these points. The claim that Christmas and Epiphany are pagan is built on sand.

ROBOT ROCK

Given what I wrote about in my article "Writing in the AI Age", I decided to run my conclusions past multiple AI platforms. After those AI platforms gave me rave reviews for accuracy and unassailability (some, of course, telling me I could neutral it up a bit), I decided to ask follow-up questions to only two platforms. I asked ChatGPT and Grok what I thought were simple questions:

How can I know when those old sources say something like "14th of the month" (or similar) that they were referring to Nisan 14 and not Artemisios 14?

Did the conversion of Nisan 14 to Artemisios 14 happen early enough that it could have led to or influenced the choice of Epiphany on January 6?

I was wholly unprepared for the AI vs AI battle that I would spark. I liken it to a dispute on the scale of the Quartodeciman controversy.

ChatGPT went on a wild tangent, completely reversing everything it had just minutes earlier assured me was accurate and unassailable. It reassured me I was still correct, but I was also wrong and would have to rewrite everything. That startled me. How could I be wrong with so much scholarly support? So, I took its concerns to Grok. Grok disagreed. Strongly. Grok insisted my article was perfectly defensible and aligned with the majority scholarly opinion.

I found myself copy/pasting responses between the two platforms for several minutes (yes, the AIs argued with each other). One would say the other was wrong, and back and forth we went. Until ... after several rounds of back-and-forth, ChatGPT, the cautious one, finally conceded Grok's point that the consensus of modern liturgical historians is exactly what I had written in the first place. Thus, ChatGPT timidly reversed itself a second time, and Grok had a hardy crow for its victory.

Turns out even the robots need to read Talley, Bradshaw, and Roll before they render a verdict.

[This is not an endorsement of any AI system. They each have strengths and weaknesses. If you use AI, make sure you a) understand how it works, and b) require it to triple-check everything it tells you.]

TENTATIVE DECISIONS

Why do I care about these Quartodecimans and their ties to Epiphany so much in the first place? Please allow me to explain, briefly.

Readers here already know this but others may be unfamiliar - As Bereans Did is a polemics blog dedicated to the investigation of what we call Armstrongism, after its founder Herbert Armstrong. Armstrongism - a branch of Seventh Day Adventism - has long claimed to be modern theological descendants of the Quartodecimans.

"Among the Gentiles the churches in Asia remained the most faithful to the word of God. We pick up the story of the true Church in the lives of such men as Polycarp and Polycrates. They were called 'Quartodecimani' because they kept the true Passover celebration instead of Easter."
-Herbert Armstrong, "True History of the True Church", 1959, p.15 

The claim is still alive and well. The United Church of God repeated it recently in their article "Church Driven Underground" from July 27, 2025. Author Tom Robinson said:

"Faithful Christians in the first few centuries after Christ were sometimes called Quartodecimans, from the Latin for 'fourteen,' as they continued to observe Passover on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan..."

"Faithful Christians" is code for "one true church" which is code for Armstrongism. Armstrongism is not descended from the Quartodecimans, of course, neither directly nor indirectly. But this claim by Herbert Armstrong, the "founder, Pastor General, and spiritual and temporal leader of the church since its inception", forces the system to own the Quartodecimans ...and everything we learn about them, which now includes the Nativity (Epiphany at first, then later Christmas).

If we only listen to Armstrongists, we would believe the Quartodecimans were opposed to honoring the resurrection on Sunday (Easter). But upon further inspection, it turns out they were not. They did observe the resurrection on Sunday, they just put an emphasis on a Nisan 14 date for the Last Supper. (See our Quartodeciman posts for more.)
And if we only listen to Armstrongists, we would believe Epiphany was pagan and the nativity resolutely to be ignored. In my post "Nimrod's Birthday Was January 6?", we explored how Herman Hoeh "the most accurately-informed historian in the world" tied both Christmas and Epiphany to Nimrod. That is patently false, of course. Absurdly false. But it was the official line from the church for decades! No going back now. Today, we have seen the Quartodecimans were not in any way opposed to observing the Nativity of Christ, and they did it on Epiphany.

Out of one side of the mouth, Armstrongism calls the Quartodecimans "the true church", but out of the other, they call anyone who observes Easter and Christmas/Epiphany "Nimrod-worshipping pagans". Now we see that must include the Quartodecimans. 

So, Armstrongists have a decision to make:
A) Own that the very "true church" itself observed Easter and the Nativity, and admit Herbert Armstrong et al were wrong.
-Or-
B) Stop claiming Armstrongism is theologically descended from the Quartodecimans, and admit Herbert Armstrong et al were wrong.

Paganism or one true church - which? One of those two pillars must fall. I’ll let you decide.

CONCLUSION

What did we see today?
1) Quartodecimans likely started Epiphany.
2) HRT cannot withstand this.
3) Any church who claims the Quartodecimans as their ancestors must deal with this.

Let’s put it all together one last time.

Early Christians determined the dates of Jesus' crucifixion - March 25 in the west and April 6 in the east. Then, they used the principle of integral ages and careful reasoning - not pagan festivals - to arrive at the dates for Jesus’ birth - December 25 Christmas in the west and January 6 Epiphany in the east.

The people who first championed the western date of March 25 were Tertullian and Hippolytus. The primary suspects for who first championed the eastern date of April 6 are the Quartodecimans - the same people Herbert Armstrong and his successors have long hailed as the one faithful “true church” that kept the pure apostolic faith. Pascha on the 14th wasn't the only thing the Quartodecimans did. They had an entire life beyond that day, which included honoring Easter Sunday and, it seems likely, celebrating the Nativity of Christ on Epiphany.

After Nicaea, the Quartodecimans gradually blended into the greater church and began keeping both Epiphany and Christmas. But Epiphany is with us to this day.

Armstrongism can’t have it both ways.
You can either keep claiming the Quartodecimans as spiritual ancestors, but then you must also own Easter and Epiphany - or - you can keep calling Christmas and Epiphany pagan, but then you must admit the Quartodecimans were pagan as well, and out goes "true history of the true church".
Either way, Herbert Armstrong et al were wrong.

As for the rest of us who believe - whether you observe December 25, January 6, both, or neither - may we all rejoice that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christmas and Epiphany are not birthdays; they honor ideas - BIG, theological ideas - of the incarnation and the birth of God. The early church, Quartodecimans very much included, did not forget this astonishing truth.

It’s a good day to remember it again.

Merry Christmas! Happy Epiphany! And grace and peace to you in the Name that is above every name, Who became flesh like we are so He could die to save us all. This is the true meaning of Christmas and Epiphany.

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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

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Jeremiah 10 Then and Again

It has been fifteen years since my Jeremiah 10 and Christmas Trees? post. Fifteen years since we dove into the context and exposed the blatant manipulation and abysmal eisegesis going on, the ignoring of context, the misleading commentary, the absolute disregard for history, the cherry-picking, the constantly shifting standards, the utter refusal to consider contradictory information, and the claiming, “I’m just reading God’s word straight from the Bible,” when that is the exact opposite of what's going on.
It takes an Olympic effort to wrestle Christmas trees into Jeremiah 10, but it only takes reading past verse 5 to get them out again.

The good news is that post has been popular, having been viewed 30k times, and it has helped a decent number of people to put away their worries, throw off the weight of false teaching, and move on with their lives, refreshed and renewed in the freedom we have in our Lord and Savior.
The bad news is, I am still seeing that old canard out there in the wild. People are still falling for the nonsense. Strangely, I see it less and less from Armstrongist resources but more and more from fringe Evangelical ones. I shudder for the sad state of Biblical literacy in some areas of Christendom presently.

Child Survivor, my friend and guest author here at ABD, reached out to me the other day because he had posted Isaiah 60: 13 "The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the pine, and the box tree together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary; and I will make the place of My feet glorious."

Some commenter popped in and responded about how angry God is with Christmas trees, and posted Jeremiah 10: 1-5, of course. They said, "I stopped putting a tree in my house because I want to hear what God says makes Him angry and try not to do it! It's what I do."

The guy meant well enough. No one should set out to make God angry. I don't fault anyone for that. But notice two things. First, he posted Jeremiah 10: 1-5 in opposition to Isaiah 60: 13. Is God divided against Himself? Does Isaiah get cancelled out somehow by Jeremiah? Of course not. They aren't in opposition. Second, the question becomes - are we really trying to listen to what makes God angry? Do trees really do that? Or are we telling God what makes Him angry?

Where in the Bible does God say He is angry at Christmas trees? Nowhere. In Isaiah 60: 13 - the verse CS posted at the outset - it clearly states that God wants trees in His house; some translations say pine trees specifically. This is a prophecy, by the way. This is what God wants in His church and in His Kingdom. He wants them. And why? To beautify! So, God is not against evergreen trees or decorating with evergreen trees.

If we cannot claim God is angry at evergreen trees in general, then we are obligated to give solid evidence of Christmas trees in specific. So, we see the accusation is really a truth claim. The claim says there genuinely was a tree tradition in history in Jeremiah's day, and that tree tradition eventually became Christmas trees. But as a truth claim, there must be evidence to support the accusation or the accusation is empty and void and false. If Jeremiah was speaking against these Jeremiah Trees, then we will find records of those in history. Let's look for that record, then.

HISTORY

The first records we have of Christmas trees come from Germany in the early 1500s. (Some dispute the exact date and location, but let’s not fret over those specifics right now.) There is nothing earlier. Not a single record, artifact, folk tale, stray mention, or other speck of evidence suggests a tradition in the Middle East in the 600s BC that resembled a Christmas tree.

Likewise, there is no evidence trail connecting Germany in the 1500s AD backwards in time to a non-existent Jeremiah Tree. This accusation is a bust. This story has no beginning and no middle.

Let's just go out on a limb here and speculate for the sake of argument that Jeremiah was speaking out against a tree tradition (I do not believe he was, but this is just for sake of argument). We still have to tie whatever Jeremiah was talking about to Christmas trees. There must be a trail of evidence connecting the two, or else all we have is a vague similarity. But as we all know, "commonality is not causality". Vague similarities won't cut it. Jeremiah could be talking about a long-dead tree tradition with no relation to Christmas trees whatsoever. There needs to be evidence connecting the two. But there is no such trail of evidence. Nothing ties Christmas trees to Europe in the 1300s AD, let alone to the Middle East in the 600s BC. And that is because there was no such tradition to begin with.

If we cannot find a tree tradition in Jeremiah’s place and time, and we cannot tie that to our modern traditions, then we have no case, no substance, nothing to stand on. The claim about Jeremiah 10 and Christmas trees is baseless. Jeremiah was railing against something non-existent? Rather unfair to accuse people of something that hadn't been invented yet. I highly doubt he did that.
(If you want to explore the real history of Christmas, we have several articles on that.)

So, God is not against decorating with trees in general, nor was Jeremiah railing against a tree decoration in specific. It's almost as if Jeremiah was talking about something else entirely.
And he was! An idol statue.

IDOLATRY

The object in Jeremiah 10 was not a mere tree, but a wooden idol god, carved to look like a human, with feet and a mouth, and overlaid with precious metals. That is the context of Jeremiah 10. There is a parallel in Isaiah chapters 40-44 that says the same thing as Jeremiah 10, but more clearly. No one says, "Isaiah talks about Christmas trees". Yet, they both talk about the same thing. The only things these idols have in common with a Christmas Tree are shallow, surface similarities like they are both made of wood. (Plastic and metal ones excepted.)

I’ve seen it claimed in some websites that the Hebrew word behind “wooden idol” in Jeremiah 10:8 (ʿēṣ, Strong’s H6086) could be translated “tree.” That is technically true. But should it be? Hebrew is a highly contextual language, and the deciding factor is always the immediate context. I've shown in the past how some people misuse Strong's concordance, treating it like a list of options, but that is not how Hebrew or Strong's works. We must let the context decide for us, or else we could just as easily translate the word as "gallows". Yes, the same Hebrew word is used for the 75-foot wooden gallows Haman built in Esther 7:9-10. Context matters!
In this case, every major English translation and every reputable commentary concludes that the finished object is not merely a tree. It starts as wood taken from a tree, but the end product is an idol statue of some kind. That’s why no standard Bible version or genuinely scholarly work treats Jeremiah 10 as a warning against trees (including the King James Version for all you KJV purists out there). Please, once again, refer back to Isaiah 60: 13.

A Christmas Tree can't walk or talk. It is not carried around. It is not shaped with a chisel nor an axe, and doesn't have any beaten plates of gold and silver covering it. People expect neither harm nor good from it. In fact, I've never heard of a Christmas Tree that even remotely fits that description.

So, it has been talking about an idol statue all along. It was never about trees. Then, what’s really going on here with these accusations about trees?

PSYCHOLOGY

People are taking something familiar to them, doing a shallow reading of Jeremiah 10:1–4, and then projecting the Christmas tree back into the time and text where it doesn’t belong. It’s an anachronism dressed up as exegesis. It didn't come from scripture. It didn't come from history. It's simply an opinion, and a poorly formed one at that.

To guard against this weakness, the conclusion is made untouchable - to disagree is to oppose God Himself. But as we've seen, it isn't God who is opposed, but the person's opinion which they have assigned to God. They tell the Bible what to say, history what to record, and God what to think, then tell you that to oppose their claim is to oppose God. That's not how any of this works. That isn’t a rational process; it’s an emotional one. The hope is to get you afraid enough to switch off your rational brain and not question it further.
We say question it further! It's necessary.

And the anxieties just keep coming.

"Pagans decorated with trees!" So did God.
"Pagans liked greenery!" So did God.
"God said 'learn not the way of the Gentile." You are a Gentile - in the New Covenant!
"God said not to worship in groves." A tree is not a grove, and we worship at all times.
"Christmas trees are idols." No one worships the tree.
"People sing to the tree." No, people sing about the tree. All songs are about something.
"God is against new traditions." Have you read Esther??

Most of the traditions associated with modern Christmas have parallels in the Bible. In addition to novel holidays (EST. 9: 20-28; JON. 10: 22-23), and gift-giving (EST. 9: 22), God also lists the use of statues in His worship (EXO. 25: 17-19), garland, bells and fruit (EXO. 28: 33-34; 39: 25-26; II CHR. 3: 16), lights, flowers and ornamentation (EXO. 25: 31-37), greenery (LEV. 23: 40; NEH. 8: 13-15), and other things I could list but won't. All of these things are Biblical. All of these things please God. Yet, somehow, all of these things are condemned as pagan. Doesn't that strike you as odd?

When I have discussions or witness discussions with the ones convinced of mythical Jeremiah trees, they usually resort to one of three responses: 1) they ignore the evidence and continue on (willful ignorance), 2) they attack the messenger rather than refute the evidence (logical fallacy of ad hominem), or 3) they cite good ol' Alexander Hislop (fake history). Do those sound like reasonable, well-formed conclusions to you?

We have multiple articles on Alexander Hislop. If you stumble upon claims about Nimrod and Semiramis, just walk away. Relying on Hislop is not the defense some people think it is. I've spent not a few words on Hislop in the past few months alone, anticipating a post just like this one. I suggest you read through everything I've written since "Some Background On Hislop". His work is not to be trusted. He was sincere, but sincerely wrong.

Alas! When we first encounter these protests they seem like legitimate concerns, but upon closer inspection we see these protests are red herrings. They are but distractions and excuses. Every objection has what I genuinely feel is a legitimate response. Some people just needed to hear a good response and have never gotten one. Hopefully we have helped with that!
However, for the truly determined, it doesn't matter. Sadly, it seems all some people want is to maintain the narrative of condemnation. Ulterior motives are at work here. There are larger conflicts going on - for most, the real war is law vs grace. Christmas is just a misunderstood weapon to fight that war with.

CONCLUSION

Fifteen years on, the Jeremiah 10 and Christmas Trees claim is getting weaker but it limps along. It is a claim made in a bygone era when good information was in short supply, now promoted on the Internet by partisans who feed on people's fears. But God in His limitless mercy has seen fit to provide on this same Internet a means to escape those false claims.
I can't say it surprises me that people fall for it. I did! People fall for scams all the time. But it saddens me. I am glad As Bereans Did and many other places have resources to shine light on it, though.

Dillon, my good friend and guest writer here, wrote an article called "Dialogue On Jeremiah 10". It's insightful. I highly recommend giving it a read!

Fifteen years later, the myth endures - but so does the truth!

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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

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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 the festival of 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? In fact, this is the majority position among scholars.

"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

"The whole range of our studies suggests that this would have been before the accession of Constantine, and on a date known by implication, if not overtly recognized, since the second century, whether that festival appeared first at Rome (as is most commonly supposed) or in North Africa (which remains an interesting, if unproven, possibility)."
-Thomas Talley, "Further Light on the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Date of the Annunciation", p. 4 

Susan K. Roll also agrees.

"The implication underlying Augustine's reproach to the Donatists that they fail to celebrate the (apparently newly-imported) feast of the Epiphany with the mainline Church, but with no mention of any Donatist failure to celebrate Christmas, which would date the latter feast before the split in 311."
-Susan K. Roll, "Towards the Origins of Christmas", p.102.

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 decades 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, uncontested 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. (See "The Plain Truth About December 25" for more.)
This is a couple decades after the freeze. Some people think because this is the first uncontested 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.

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? Answer: 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. Two of the main architects where Christmas is concerned were Franz Cumont and Hermann Usener. 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 proposed in the late 1800s by Louis Duchesne but gained popularity in the late 1900s when Thomas Talley picked it up. 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 Hippolytus' calculation of 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 originally 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 push the observance of a December 25 Christmas festival 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 it was his calculations that arrived at December 25 to begin with), 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.
And I haven't even mentioned the part where no Donatist would knowingly accept a festival co-opted from paganism.

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. HRT cannot deal with Epiphany at all. That is also a very strong mark in CT's 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".

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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

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