22 December 1992

                                                                            Winter Solstice

        The Philippines lies north of the equator -- not north enough to experience the seasons of winter, spring, summer and fall; but north enough to notice how short the daylight hours are in December and how long the sun shines in March.
        It is around this time that we experience the shortest day of the year -- the time of the winter solstice. This fact would be irrelevant to Christians, were it not for the fact that it has something to do with the timing of Christmas.
        Nobody really knows the exact date when Jesus Christ was born. The Christians of the first three centuries did not celebrate Christmas Day as we do. The feast of the Epiphany (Jan. 6) -- was celebrated far earlier than Christmas was, and the Epiphany marked not only the adoration of the Christ child by the Magi but also the birth of Jesus as well as the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
        The choice of Dec. 25 as the birth date of Jesus seems to stem from pagan Rome's celebration of the winter solstice -- Dec. 21 -- as the feast of the Unconquered Sun [Sol Invictus]. Though we think of the winter solstice as the shortest day of the year, it is also the day on which the sun, which for the past six months has been ``weakening'' (in the sense that the days were growing shorter) starts to gain strength (in the sense that the days will start growing longer).
        Sixtus Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologist who lived in Rome in the third century, declared that the real Sun of Justice and Orient (that is, the sun rising from Capricorn too Cancer) is Christ, the Son of God. This chronologist set Christ's birth right after the winter solstice and his incarnation right after the spring equinox (March 21).
        Adopting this chronology, the Roman Church felt it was only logical and even ``scientific'' to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25, exactly nine months after the Feast of the Annunciation -- which already was being celebrated on March 25.
        It was at the Annunciation that the angel Gabriel declared unto Mary that she would conceive of the Holy Spirit and she responded, ``Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word'' -- and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
        The earliest record of Dec. 25th being celebrated as Christmas Day is a Roman church calendar for the year 354. About 50 years later, John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, learned of the feast and introduced it into his patriarchiate -- erroneously believing that the Roman authorities had consulted the civil archives and had found the date in the report on the census that had been transmitted to the emperor Augustus. From Constantinople, the feast spread through the Eastern Church, just as the celebration spread from Rome through the Western Church.
        Today, we have completely forgotten the Feast of the Unconquered Sun, but some memory of it is retained in the Roman Catholic liturgy of Christmas. The liturgy for the week spanning Dec. 17 and 23 includes seven antiphons for the Magnificat, the hymn of the Blessed Mother.
        The antiphons represent the quintessence of Advent. They express a growing expectation for the coming of the Savior, starting with the antiphon for Dec. 17, which goes, ``O Wisdom, who art come forth from the Most High, teaching from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing all things, come to teach us the way of prudence,'' and ending with the antiphon for Dec. 23, which goes: ``O Emmanuel, our king and lawgiver, the awaited of the people and their savior, come to save us, O Lord our God.''
        For Dec. 21, the winter solstice, the antiphon reads: ``O Orient, splendor of light eternal, and sun of justice, come and enlighten those who sit in darkness in the shadow of death.''