which we dimly feel to be indispensable to our safety.





THREE

THE SOLSTICE AND GOOD WILL


In order to see that there is underlying Christmas an idea of faith
which will at any rate last as long as the planet lasts, it is only
necessary to ask and answer the question: "Why was the Christmas feast
fixed for the twenty-fifth of December?" For it is absolutely certain,
and admitted by everybody of knowledge, that Christ was not born on the
twenty-fifth of December. Those disturbing impassioned inquirers after
truth, who will not leave us peaceful in our ignorance, have settled
that for us, by pointing out, among other things, that the twenty-fifth
of December falls in the very midst of the Palestine rainy season, and
that, therefore, shepherds were assuredly not on that date watching
their flocks by night.

* * * * *

Christians were not, at first, united in the celebration of Christmas.
Some kept Christmas in January, others in April, others in May. It was a
pre-Christian force which drove them all into agreement upon the
twenty-fifth of December. Just as they wisely took the Christmas tree
from the Roman Saturnalia, so they took the date of their festival from