by Roseanna White | Dec 7, 2016 | Ancient World, Holiday History, Holidays, Remember When Wednesdays
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard over the years that Constantine is the one who decided Christmas would be celebrated on December 25, because it was already a pagan holiday, and this would make it easier on his people to convert to Christianity. I pretty much believed this for years . . . until I looked it up for myself.
I had to look into this when I began my research for
Giver of Wonders. There are two different major holidays celebrated by Rome, which Constantine is accused of trying to integrate into Christmas, or vice versa. One of these holidays actually wasn’t even celebrated until
after the days of Constantine, when the date of Christmas was definitely set. So that rules that one out.
The other is Saturnalia, which had been celebrated in Roman culture for centuries. It was a festival of lights (does sound familiar…) and one of gift-giving (also familiar). So is there truth to that accusation? Did Constantine choose that date for Christmas and then integrate our holy day into a pagan festival?
Nope.
In reality, Constantine didn’t do anything but legalize what was already custom. The church had been observing the birth of Christ on December 25 for many years already by the time the emperor converted, and even by the time that date was canonized by the Council.
Why December 25th then? Those who study history and the Jewish calendar are pretty sure Christ could not have been born in winter. There were shepherds in the hills, after all, which wouldn’t have been the case in December. So what gives?
Well, I don’t know why those in the know ignored some very sound logic when determining the date. But here’s what I do know: they had a reason for selecting December 25 that had nothing to do with any pagan holidays. See, at that time in history, Dec 25 was the winter solstice (did you know the date of the solstice had moved??). That’s why the pagans celebrated on that day–it’s why pretty much every religion had a celebration on that day.
But Christians? Why did we?
Well, it’s because the Christian scholars and priests of that era (educated, it may be worth noting, in Greek and Roman schools–there were no Christian-only schools at the time) believed that the God who created the universe created it with order and symmetry. They believed, for example (as did their Greek and Roman compatriots) that important men had a star appear to herald their birth. (So it would have been odd if the Gospels hadn’t included this for Jesus!) They believed their lives and births were written in the very cosmos–which is pretty cool, really. Right?
Well they also believed that this symmetry extended to the length of their life as well, and that the best and most important men in history lived in a full number of years.
Um . . . huh?
It’s weird. I know. This belief certainly didn’t survive the millennia, LOL. But that’s honestly what they thought. That Jesus, as the greatest man ever, would have lived a whole number of years, no random months and days added on.
So that would mean born and died on the same day, right? And we know he died on Passover–which was, as it happened, the Spring Equinox. So he must have been born on it . . . right?
Wrong. Life was not counted from the date of birth–it was counted from the supposed date of conception. So the belief was that the Holy Spirit must have conceived Jesus in Mary on the Spring Equinox (March 25). Which meant that He would have been born 9 months later.
So our quick math scrolls that calendar ahead 9 months to . . . voila! December 25.
This, my friends, is the honest-to-goodness reason why Christmas was set on December 25, way back in the 200s, well before Constantine took power and converted to Christianity.
Now, did some of the pagan traditions–candlelight and gift-giving–work their way into the day? Perhaps. Though gift-giving on Christmas wasn’t actually that prevalent until centuries later. Gift-giving, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, was actually done on Dec 6–the Feast Day of St. Nicholas (yesterday!), to remember the saint who gave so generously of his wealth, and anonymously. Dec 6 was a day to give and have no one know who gave. But it was close to Christmas. And over the years, the traditions blurred together. Especially, honestly, after the Protestant Revolution, when Luther declared “No more feast days of saints!” The people weren’t willing to give up their St. Nicholas Day . . . so they began saying it was the Christ Child who gave gifts on his birthday instead (Christ-kindl in German, which is where Kris Kringle came from!).
So there we have it. It may not be the actual date on which Jesus was born–probably isn’t–but it was a date selected because the people doing the selecting believed that the greatest Man in history would have been conceived and died on the same day.
by Roseanna White | Nov 9, 2016 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
As a promised, a bit more about Giver of Wonders today. 😉
At the start of the story, my heroine Cyprus is twelve years old. In the very first scene, she experiences an accident that leaves her paralyzed–and the thoughts and fears are quick to bombard her. Her father–Roman by heritage but Greek by upbringing–will have no patience for her in such a condition, she knows.
She knows he loves her. But she’s just a child–and a girl, at that. In that society at that point in history, female children weren’t viewed as precious–not when they had a disability, certainly. They were possessions of the father, and their purpose was to bring him honor through their marriages. According to Roman law, a father can kill his daughter at any point in her life without consequence. It’s his right.
So Cyprus, suddenly unable to move, sees her life flash before her eyes–but not the life she’s lived thus far. The short, brutal life she knows is about to come.
She’ll die. Not from the fall that severed her spinal cord (not that I name it as such, LOL), but from what she views as the decision her father will have no choice but to make. It’s unthinkable that he’ll saddle himself and his wife with such a child for innumerable years. He’ll do what his Greek neighbors would expect him to do:
Kill her.
Because he loves her, she doubts he’ll be able to do it by his own hand, so he’ll do what most parents do in the face of an obviously imperfect child: leave her on a hilltop for the weather and wild animals to snarl over.
To modern, Western philosophy, this mindset is simply unthinkable. Because children are precious. They are a gift from God. We give them, in general, more consideration than adults–but this is a relatively new idea. As recently as a hundred years ago, families with any means still believed children were meant to be tucked away and cared for out of sight–and earshot–by hired help. Christmas celebrations were for the adults, not primarily the children. They would have considered this ancient mindset extreme, but they without the benefit of modern medicine and therapy and equipment probably would have also shrugged and said, “But I understand. What can they do? Wouldn’t it have been more merciful to end her suffering?”
Throughout the book, Cyprus’s father represents that Greek/Roman way of thinking–first for himself and only after that for his daughters.
So how are daughters to respond, especially in a world that thinks like he does?
How do you honor a parent who is not honoring God?
These are a few questions I dig into–quesitons I had no answer to going in, but which came to light as I wrote. And I do it by remembering something that would have been new and revolutionary at the time:
God values children, even daughters. He pours love and affection out upon them. The early Christian church did something unprecedented in history by taking in orphans and unwanted children and loving them. Teaching them that God loved them. That they were precious.
That mindset we take for granted today? That’s all thanks to God and Jesus. Which is why it’s pretty funny when the secular feminist today spouts nonsense about the Bible being anti-woman. Because honey, without the Bible and its mores, you wouldn’t have any rights to complain at all. 😉
Of course, the book would be pretty short if Cyprus’s father really killed her after chapter one. She ends up miraculously healed . . . but her father won’t accept that either. Because why would God waste a miracle on a third daughter? And so, in the years to come, Cyprus asks a new question:
Why did God heal her?
I think this is a question many of us relate to. Why did God move in that way in our lives? What was the plan, the purpose? How are we supposed to remember the feeling of peace and Joy when the world around us crumbles?
Good questions. It takes Cyprus many, many pages to arrive at an answer. And it’s one I pray will shed some new light on what love–selfless, God-given love–is really all about.
by Roseanna White | Oct 19, 2016 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
It’s only a week and a half until November. That means a week and a half until this releases…
In all the excitement of visiting England and seeing the settings for my Bethany House books, Giver of Wonders hasn’t been talked about much. But now, with November and release upon us . . . well, it’s time to talk about Christmas. =)
I wanted to write a Christmas book–that’s one of the reasons that I sat down, a couple years ago, and began this story. Except that it isn’t a traditional Christmas book. It’s set around 290 AD, well before recognizable Christmas traditions began. There were no evergreen trees lit up. No snow, certainly, where this takes place in modern-day Turkey (Lycia at the time). There were no stockings and tinsel and jolly elves in red.
But there were gifts. And they came down a chimney. And there was the man on whom the jolly elf in red was, loosely, based.
There were miracles instead of magic. There was Jesus and his birth, celebrated among the early church on the Winter Solstice (December 25 at the time). There was sacrifice, and there was family, and there was love.
It took me forever to write this book. Or at the very least, a year longer than I intended it to do. I struggled a bit to put my vision for who the real St. Nicholas might have been onto the page, and to do so in a way that stuck with my usual formula for a biblical novel. Because, of course, this story isn’t primarily about Nikolaos (as it would have been spelled in Greek…with English letters, LOL.) It’s about fictional characters Cyprus Visibullis and her sisters. Who are, in my version of events, the sisters around whom one of our most beloved Christmas traditions was born.
Because Nik gave more than gifts to children who really don’t need them. He gave gifts to those who needed them most, and he gave them anonymously. He gave hope to those who were lost. He gave life and healing to those who were broken and desperate.
Nikolaos was a man of God. And though my novelized version of him is probably pretty far from the real man who led the church in Myra all those centuries ago, I pray it gets to the heart of him. And to why he’s still celebrated today.
So though my focus hasn’t been on it much yet, I’m so excited to share Giver of Wonders with the world, and I look forward to talking about parts of it each Wednesday in the next month or so. It’s a Christmas story that you can read in any season. Because ultimately, it’s not about the day Jesus was born.
It’s about the love that ought to fill His followers all year.
by Roseanna White | Sep 28, 2016 | Remember When Wednesdays
While in England, I found myself making a list of the little details I hadn’t known. The little things that aren’t wrong in my books, but which aren’t present.
The first to strike me:
I don’t have nearly enough sheep in my stories.
Because seriously. While we were in Salisbury and then the Cotswolds, there were sheep everywhere. According to our host at the B&B, if you have a plot of grass, you just throw some sheep onto it to keep it trim. Apparently wool these days isn’t worth what you have to pay the man to come and sheer them, so all the money in it is in lambing. And, I suppose, whatever you save in lawn mowers. 😉
Not coming from a sheep-rich area, I found this pretty noteworthy. And it also meant I noted things about how they keep the sheep. In many places, there are no fences to keep them in the field–there are instead ditches dug around the pasture, which are called ha-has. Because while the sheep quickly learned to avoid them, unsuspecting humans often don’t pay attention and fall in, to the amusement of their companions.
That was my big revelation in central England. When we went to the West Country and stayed in Cornwall, my revelations were different. Namely, I had way too many trees in the first draft of A Name Unknown.
Now, there are trees in Cornwall to be sure. But they tend not to be near the cliffs of the coast, and I have my estate in the story have coastal property. So I needed to do some rearranging of my fictional estate and move the woods to the opposite end. 😉 At least in the miles we walked or drove through, there’s no emerging from the trees onto the cliffs. Between the two would be a large expanse of scrub, filled with heather and gorse and…
WIND.
Wow. I don’t know if it’s always like this in Cornwall, but every day we were there was crazy-windy. Now, being accustomed to the beach, I knew there would be wind off the water. I had some. But not nearly enough. Much like sheep. 😉 So I turned up the wind and down the trees. And of course had to mention these beauties.
They look like palm trees, and Cornwall is “sub-tropical.” But I put that in quotes, because it means temperate, not warm. Certainly not warm enough for real palms. These are actually a New Zealand species that are also called cabbage trees, as parts of them are edible and were part of the Maori diet. Though they’re commonly referred to as a Cornish palm, and though you’ll see them all over the place in Cornwall, and though they do give you an air of a tropical resort . . . don’t let ’em fool you. “Sunny Cornwall” was gorgeous, but we saw just as much rain as sun when we were there, LOL. Maybe more, actually. Though it certainly didn’t stop us from getting out and enjoying the beauty of this rugged coastline. Cornwall was definitely a LOVE!
by Roseanna White | Sep 7, 2016 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays, The Great War
If one researches art in Wales, one will come across two sisters–a lot. If one researches music in Wales during World War I, one will come across them again. If one researches how soldiers adjusted to life back at home after the war . . . you get the idea. You’ll yet again end up reading about the Davies sisters, Margaret (called Daisy) and Gwendoline (Gwen).
So naturally, they have to be in my Welsh-set A Song Unheard.
Actually, they’re what inspired it. When I was doing my initial research for how the arts were put to use during WWI, I ran across part of their story, and it intrigued me. It inspired my entire plot.
You see, in the first weeks of the war, Germany invaded Belgium–a country who only existed because it had sworn to neutrality. To violate those terms wasn’t just a blow to the Belgians, it was a blow to civilization. No one could quite believe that the German leadership had so blatantly scorned an agreement made and signed. It wasn’t how gentlemen behaved–it wasn’t how war was waged.
The invasion of Belgium proved to Europe that Germany had no respect for the heretofore “civilized” way of doing things. It horrified the world when the troops marched in and began burning villages, beating priests, and killing innocent civilians. Refugees flooded into friendly nations like England.
And in Wales, these two sisters didn’t just wait for refugees to come to them. They sought them out. Within a few months of the invasion of Belgium, Daisy and Gwen had sent friends into that devastated country to recruit Belgium’s top musicians to come to Wales.
Musicians? you might say. Why??
The answer is two-fold. First, the Davieses were first and foremost always looking to better their “dear principality.” They loved Wales and wanted to better it. They wanted to bring culture to the area often deemed a bit too rural. But that wasn’t their only reasoning.
They also wanted to help. You see, everyone knew from the start that if Germany didn’t relinquish its hold on Belgium, it would soon spell utter disaster for the small nation. Their food supplies wouldn’t last beyond a few months. And with all trade cut off, its citizens would soon be starving. Aid was being organized within weeks of the invasion, much of it spearheaded by Americans (who were thus far otherwise staying as far from the war as possible).
Well, Gwen and Daisy wanted to help with the relief effort. So they put together a symphony orchestra of Belgian refugees and toured Wales, raising money for the Belgian Relief Fund.
This, of course, is where A Song Unheard was born. My hero is a violinist previously with the Brussels Conservatoire, now part of this orchestra touring Wales.
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| Gregynog |
But even after organizing this, the sisters were by no means ready to sit back and say they’d done their duty. A few years later they moved to France, not far from the front, to run a cantina for the soldiers. And a few years after the war, they purchased and opened an estate called Gregynog, whose primary purpose was to rehabilitate soldiers returning from the war, to teach them art and crafts and music to help soothe the ragged edges wrought by violence.
These were sisters described by all who knew them as devout, faithful, focused always on the Lord–and on helping their fellow man. Today, the largest collection of art in Wales is on display because the sisters donated them to the university museum upon their deaths. Theirs is a legacy known far and wide in their dear principality.
Here’s hoping my fictionalized versions of them can do them justice!
by Roseanna White | Aug 31, 2016 | Remember When Wednesdays
We are officially 13 days from the release of A Lady Unrivaled, the final book in the Ladies of the Manor Series. I’m so excited to share Ella’s story with the world! Most of you probably know how special this series is to me–how The Lost Heiress is rewrite of the very first novel I finished at age 13. Well, Ella’s story is very special to me too . . . because Ella is more like me than any other heroine when it comes to her heart. Her way of seeing the world.
And Russian ballerinas sent to England as spies. There’s that too. That made this book so much fun!
So last week this happened.
That would be the arrival of my author copies of A Lady Unrivaled. Always an exciting day (even if I have nowhere to put those three boxes!).
And this week–this week, we could start looking up the 10-day forecast for where we’ll be in England next week!!!! Still can’t believe that one’s actually happening. But it is. Next Thursday, I’ll be looking up at Stonehenge with my kids and husband.
I’ll get to celebrate A Lady Unrivaled‘s release day in England, after having been where Ella and Cayton would be (more or less). This is pretty awesome.
My to-do list though . . . that’s a wee bit intimidating, LOL. So I need to get back to it, if you’ll excuse me. Just had to share the joy of books arriving and soon releasing!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.