| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Christmas |
 | | In view of a reaction to certain Jewish rites and feasts, Chrysostom tries to unite Antioch in celebrating Christ's birth on 25 December, part of the community having already kept it on that day for at least ten years. |
 | | In the West, he says, the feast was thus kept, anothen; its introduction into Antioch he had always sought, conservatives always resisted. |
 | | Gervase of Tilbury (thirteen century) says that in England grain is exposed on Christmas night to gain fertility from the dew which falls in response to "Rorate Cæli"; the tradition that trees and flowers blossomed on this night is first quoted from an Arab geographer of the tenth century, and extended to England. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/03724b.htm (4639 words) |