It was a school nativity. It wasn’t about Mary or Jesus, it was about a child playing a role in a school nativity - a nostalgic memory for most British people and a major feature of many people’s Christmases, religious or not.The supermarket is merely highlighting an event we can all relate to. No need for the religious amongst us to get all hoity toity about it.
Yep. Christian communities in strange locales were often cash- strapped.
Hoity toity had nothing to do with it. I’m American and unfamiliar with the specific British ad that inspired the OP. I say that, in general, advertising should steer clear of religious imagery. I said it would be difficult to use religious elements in a commercial without being either crass or cheesy.
The ad you have in mind may have been harmless or even charming.
Well, you could click on the link and find out.
And I don’t have a problem with advertising touching on moments in people’s lives which may be part of a religious event - weddings? Christenings? Are they all off limits?
Thanks for your reply.
The problems with a purported Christian conflation of a Feast of Sol Invictus on December 25 with the Feast of the Nativity are many:
- We have no evidence of the existence of any such festival honoring Sol Invictus on December 25 until well after the rise of the Christian movement, and the textual evidence that it was one of the dates on which the Nativity was reckoned.
When did December 25 begin to be celebrated as the Feast of the Nativity? While Easter was fixed from the beginning from Gospel references to Passover, other Christian feasts were often celebrated on different dates in different regions until a consensus was formed in the Church. The Feast of All Saints’ Day, for example, was a date to celebrate the martyrdom of the many saints who did not have specific feast days devoted to them. (The calendar filled up pretty rapidly with martyrdoms under Diocletan and Nero). November 1 was the date used in Germany, and was finally settled on by Rome. (No, it had nothing to do with appropriating Samhain…)
December 25 emerged early as one of the dates.
Writing shortly after Commodus was assassinated on December 31, A.D. 192, St. Clement of Alexandria provides the earliest documented dates for the Nativity. He wrote that one hundred ninety-four years, one month, and thirteen days had elapsed since then, which gives us to a birth date of November 18 or, if the forty-nine intercalary days which are missing from the Alexandrian calendar are added, January 6 (i.e., Epiphany). Moreover, There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day" (Stromata, I.21), including dates in April and May, as well as another day in January.
Hippolytus, a younger contemporary of Clement, wrote that the Nativity had occurred on December 25 (Commentary on Daniel, IV.23.3). And, although the statement may be a later interpolation, he reiterated several decades later (in AD 235) that Jesus was born nine months after the anniversary of the creation of the world, which Hippolytus believed to have been on March 25 (Chronicon, 686ff). The Nativity thus would be on December 25. So we have the December 25 date reckoned for the birth of Jesus in 235 A.D., and probably 200 A.D., well before any mention of the Feast of Sol Invictus.
Circa 221 A.D., Julius Africanus wrote the Chronographiae, the first Christian chronology., in which he stated that Jesus had been conceived on March 25, which would again provide a birth date used by the early Church on or about December 25.
In 243 A.D., Cyprian was the first Christian writer to associate the birth of Jesus symbolically with the Sun: “O! The splendid and divine Providence of the Lord, that on that day, even at the very day, on which the Sun was made [March 28], Christ should be born” (De Pascha Computus, XIX). Creation itself was on March 25, the vernal equinox, and the Sun created on the fourth day, March 28. It followed that the “Sun of righteousness,” in Malachi’s phrase, would be born then as well.
On December 25, AD 380, St. Gregory of Nazianzus delivered a sermon in Constantinople in which he referred to the day as "the feast of God’s Appearing, or of the Nativity: both names are used, both titles given to the one reality…The name of the feast, then, is ‘Theophany’ because he has appeared, but ‘Nativity’ because he has been born" (Oration XXXVIII.3).
Then on January 6, AD 381 St. Gregory preached on the Baptism (Oration XL), a date traditionally celebrated as the Theophany (the Feast of the Epiphany in the Western church, commemorating the visitation of the Magi in Bethlehem). Traditionally, the Eastern church celebrated the Nativity and Epiphany (the realization that Jesus was the manifestation of Christ) as a single Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.
So long before the Feast of Sol Invictus, we have some Christians using December 25 as the date, and using solar symbolism (NOT conflating Christ as literally the sun, obviously - more on that later).
St. John of Chrystosom, who was cited by GreenWyvern, delivered a sermon on the feast day of Philogonius, bishop of Antioch, who had died about 60 years before. It was delivered on December 20, probably in AD 386. John was anticipating the Feast of the Nativity, which was to occur in five days’ time (December 25). That was the day he delivered another homily, In Diem Natalem (“On the Birthday”), in which he remarks that it has been less than ten years since the festival had been introduced at Antioch.
“A feast is approaching which is the most solemn and awe-inspiring of all feasts…What is it? The birth of Christ according to the flesh. In this feast namely Epiphany, holy Easter, Ascension and Pentecost have their beginning and their purpose. For if Christ hadn’t been born according to the flesh, he wouldn’t have been baptised, which is Epiphany. He wouldn’t have been crucified, which is Easter. He wouldn’t have sent the Spirit, which is Pentecost. So from this event, as from some spring, different rivers flow—these feasts of ours are born.” John Chrysostom, Homily VI: On St. Philogonius (23-24)
So we have textual evidence that December 25 was finally settled upon by the Pope, not randomly or to “steal” any existing pagan holiday (for the reasons I cited in earlier posts) probably circa 376 A.D. But we have textual evidence of the importance of that date to Christians long before the Emperor appropriated it, either to mock the Christians or to try to reclaim former pagans’ allegiances.
- The nature of the worship of “Sol Invictus” was a neo-Platonist tactic to try to stem the tide of the rising Christian movement, by grafting elements from the increasingly popular Christian movement onto the older pagan orthodoxy - thus, older deities like Apollo, Mithra, Dionysius now become saviors of mankind. In essence, what we find was the borrowing of Christian elements by pagan emperors, to try to gain the loyalty of apostates from paganism. Due to the increasing rate of conversions to Christianity, the Emperors Julian the Apostate and Aurelian saw a threat to existing Roman state power, which was tied to the Pagan religion which they correctly saw as a cultural bond among Roman citizens during a time of internal and external threats to the security of Imperial Rome. This created the rise of the Neo-Platonist movement, which attempted to appropriate elements of the Christian narrative and incorporate them into the existing pagan religion - thus, messianic, compassionate elements were grafted into the official cults of Dionysius, Adonis, etc. The Cult of Sol Invictus was one such attempt to divert public affection from the rise of the Christian movement and back on to the state-supported pagan religion, at a time when Rome needed it the most.
We do not find evidence from St. John that “Chrysostom makes it clear that Christmas was deliberately fixed on the same day as Natalis Solis Invicti,” simply that the Christians wanted to celebrate their own celebration, on their own date.
(It should also be noted that the Catholic Encyclopedia edition quoted by GreenWyvern are known for their doubtful scholarship. The supposed quote GreenWyvern uses from St. John Chrystosom does not appear in any collections of his works, only in that volume of the Catholic Encyclopedia, and it’s likely that it was actually written, or perhaps poorly translated, by Jacques Paul Migne. Migne was a former Catholic priest (1800 - 1975) who created a Catholic publishing house which published cheaply printed works for the use of local priests, and which always have been criticized by researchers for their poor scholarship. Although the Catholic Encyclopedia is often cited for some sort of “official” statement by the Catholic Church, it’s anything but. He also fell into disrepute with the Church and had his priestly functions suspended, so I would not rely upon him as a source,)
- It is also possible that the Feast of Sol Invictus was not even a religious holiday, and was a secular celebration of a military accomplishment.
What is the evidence for this?
We only have a single solid historical primary source for December 25 as the feast of Sol Invictus - the Chronography of A.D. 354 (The Calendar of Filocalus), where their is a small notation marked as “N - INVICTI - CM - XXX” (“Birthday of the Unconquered - games ordered: thirty [chariot-races]”)
There is, in fact, good evidence that December 25 was at best only a minor holiday for the Sol Invictus cult, so it would make little sense for the Church to try to supplant that date instead of the dates with greater religious significance to the Sol Invictus cult, namely August, 8, 9, or 12, or December 11 - none of which correspond to any significant solar event.
The evidence that Sol Invictus was celebrated on December 25 is even debatable - unlike the other calendar entries for feasts of Sol Invictus, the name “Sol” is not included in the A.D. 354 calendar, only “Invictus” (“unconquerable”), leading some scholars to believe that it was a secular celebration for a military leader. Further evidence for this is the fact that all other references to celebratory chariot races at other times of the year were in multiples of 12 (for the 12 months), whereas this reference is to 30, for unknown reasons. If we discount the doubtful scholarship of the Catholic Encyclopedia quote, purportedly from St. John Chrystosom, we don’t really have any contemporaneous evidence of its use by the Sol Invictus cult.
None of the other known feasts for Sol Invictus throughout the year fell on any astronomically significant dates, either, which would further discredit the idea that this date, or Winter Solstice in general, was a religious holiday for the Romans, anymore than my fascination with the solstices and equinoxes will be a religious holiday for me because I recognize the Solstice exists and am kind of an astronomy geek. They were important days from a secular standpoint for reckoning agricultural planting dates.
We also have no existing documents from the early Church saying, “Hey, let’s take over this holiday!” What we do have are documents relating to the use of cosmic symbolism, as Jesus is frequently compared to the sun, the waning of the days before the solstice and the waxing of the days afterward is used as an analogy for the influence of Christ, and the Star of Bethlehem is discussed as a sign of His birth. As glorious creations of the one God, Christians would have felt very comfortable using astronomical symbols such as the sun, moon, and stars to make their theological points with no concern about using “pagan” symbols.
In re the final quotes from the Catholic Encyclopedia, yes, they show the Church did not want people to fall into the heresy of worshipping Christ as the sun, rather than using the sun symbolically. So rather than incorporating pagan themes, the Church taught to avoid them - which is what I have been saying!
In re the other comments on this thread, I would kind of worry if Christian elements were used in ad campaigns - I don’t want to see actors dressed as Joseph and Mary saying “We’d travel ANYWHERE to find low prices like these!”
^ Or Baby Jesus riding the Nöelco [sic] electric shaver down the slopes.
With remote controls everywhere, does anybody even watch commercials anymore?