![]() ![]() The Philocalian calendar of AD 354, part VI, gives a festival of natalis invicti on 25 December. This practice dates from at least the mid-4th Century. But we know that the Syriac Christians were already celebrating Christmas (although it was considered a minor feast leading up to Epiphany) in the last week of their season of Subbara, which falls on December in the Gregorian Calendar. There is seems to be little evidence to suggest it was celebrated before 4th Century in Rome. Earliest record of Sol Invictus being celebrated on the 25th of December is from 354 A.D. But there is no evidence that Sol Invictus was observed anywhere outside of the borders of the Roman Empire. ![]() Some claim that Christmas a replacement of the feast of Hanukkah or of the Invincible Sun. Around 744, Saint Sturm established the monastery of Fulda on the ruins of a 6th-century Merovingian royal camp, destroyed 50 years earlier by the Saxons, at a ford on the Fulda River. According to Willibald's Life of Saint Boniface, about 723, the missioner cut down the sacred Donar's Oak and used the lumber to build a church dedicated to St. In 609 Pope Boniface IV obtained leave from the Byzantine Emperor Phocas to convert the Pantheon in Rome into a Christian church, a practice similar to that recommended eight years earlier by Pope Gregory I to Mellitus regarding Anglo-Saxon holy places, in order to ease the transition to Christianity. Many previously pagan holy places were converted to Christian use. For the Christians who made the catacombs, these symbols were necessary to convey their message. Christians and Jews adapted the convention, identifying it with another symbol - the halo. Pagan sarcophagi had long carried shells, and portraits of the dead often had shells over the head of the dead, while some put a shell over a grave. Jewish and pagan use of sheep and goats, birds in a tree or vine, or eating fruit, especially grapes, seven steps leading up to a tomb, a pair of peacocks, the Robe of sanctity, the reading of scrolls, are all found in pagan art and adapted in the Christian art to express the hope of immortality in Christian terms. the Good Shepherd, Baptism, and the Eucharistic meal - the Orant figures (women praying with upraised hands) probably came directly from pagan art.: Pagan symbolism in the form of Victories, cupids, and shepherd scenes are scattered throughout the catacombs. While many new subjects appear for the first time in the Christian catacombs - i.e. "The Jewish faith puts little emphasis on immortality, and pagan beliefs about the afterlife were vague, uncertain, and sometimes dismal". Neither Judaism nor any pagan religion had previously made such a claim. Christian art had something fundamentally new to say as it gave visual expression to the conviction that the human soul can be delivered from death to an everlasting life. ![]() Christian piety infused the symbols with its own fresh interpretation. This art is symbolic, rising out of a reinterpretation of Jewish and pagan symbolism. Pagans and Jews decorated their burial chambers, so Christians did as well, thereby creating the first Christian art in the catacombs beneath Rome. Macarius of Egypt (fourth century) writes of such a contest which is only resolved by the intervention of the person's guardian angel - which is roughly parallel to Plato's daimon. John Chrysostum gives a vivid account of the dying soul seeing angels and demons - "account books in hand" - struggling against each other in a contest for possession of the dying person's soul. As soon as death was immanent, the ritual began, then came the "struggle of the soul" and prayer for the dying. The early Christians adapted many elements of paganism.: Ancient pagan funeral rituals often remained within Christian culture as aspects of custom and community with very little alteration.: A type of song sung at death, the ritual lament, is one of the oldest of all art forms. Some of elements that are claimed to be of Pagan origin are not true, while many are of a dubious nature and can not be clearly proven. Many pagan elements were adopted in the Early Church. ![]() What Pagan elements were adopted in christianity? ![]()
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