explain the placement of christmas?

Answer 1

In the early Church, Christmas was celebrated at a number of different times of the year. It is rather important to understand that it isn't Christimas per se that was being celebrated but rather the nativity, or the "God with us." No one knew the date of birth of Jesus and various churches of apostolic origins used various dates.

At about the time the Church was deciding to celebrate Easter on a uniform date, or Pascha as it is still called in most of the Church, it also was discussing nativity.

In most of the East, Theophany was the major celebration and in the West Nativity. Rome and Antioch both celebrated the Nativity on December 25th due to the Lucan census story. The spring was the primary other time. The issue revolves around reading the scriptures. In the Catholic and Orthodox Churches the calendar is used to divide the scriptures up so that they are all read at some point. However, some readings, like the Easter readings are considered so important that they should be read at least once per year, regardless of the calendar cycle of when they should happen if you read the bible in order.

Christmas, as it is now called, was one of those set of bible readings which were considered so important that they should always be read at least one time per year. So a festal celebration was set aside to read the scriptures of the nativity in. The actual date is partly compromise, partly legend and partly logical.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem was not going to transfer from the Spring without a good reason and he asked the Pope of Rome to go to the ancient Roman tax office and look up the date of the census in Luke. We do not have the reply correspondence, but we do have a subsequent change in the Jerusalem calendar and the issue, following the decision by the Jerusalem Church disappeared. So the reason was to make the important readings of scripture globally uniform. It may be apocryphal that the census started in December, but it appears that at least some early Christians believed that it was the case. Further, Saturnalia happens to occur near then and so it was convenient to read the contrary scripture readings as an attack on Saturnalia.

All that said, we still have two dates for Christmas, January 6th and December 25th because January 5th is December 25th on the Julian calendar and there are still people on the Julian calendar.

Answer 2

A celebration for the day that reflects on the birth of Jesus. A day to love and gather as a family together.