Als Kerstmis en Pasen op één dag vallen

Abstract

When Christmas and Easter will fall on the same day, it must be March 25. Two dissertations published in 1995 make an important contribution to our perception of the origins of the liturgical year: Susan K. Roll: Toward the origins of Christmas, and Louis van Tongeren: Exaltatio crucis. These two studies were preceded by the published edition of Ton Scheer's De aankondiging van de Heer (The Annunciation), originally accepted as a dissertation in Rome 25 years ago. All three dissertations discuss in one way or another aspects of Easter that have become separate feasts. The Exaltation and Christmas moreover have in common that they arose in the confrontation of the Christian tradition with the 'world'. Christmas is somehow related to the Roman feast of the Sol invictus, either as an analogy or as a competitor. The Exaltation may be associated, perhaps through the parallel with the dedication of the Temple of Salomon in the seventh month, with the consecration of the Roman temple for Jupiter Capitolinus on September 13. Roll gives a balanced evaluation of the different influences {theological, natural, historical) in the process of the birth of Christmas. Although she does not state this inference herself, we may on the basis of Roll's study conclude that a not unimportant secondary theme of Easter, vid. the (re)birth of Jesus Christ, became independent in the first half of the third century, partly under the influence of solar symbolism in Roman culture, partly in an atmosphere characterized by vigorous debates about the humanity of the Anointed.