festival of the Christian church; observed on the 25th of December, in memory of the nativity or birth of Jesus Christ. As to the antiquity of this festival, the first footsteps we find of it are in the second century, about the time of the emperor Commodus. The decreal epistles indeed carry it up a little higher; and say that Telephorus, who lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, ordered divine service to be celebrated, and an angelical hymn to be sung the night before the nativity of our Saviour. However, that it was kept before the times of Constantine, we have a melancholy proof: for whilst the persecution raged under Diocletian, who then kept his court at Nicomedia, that prince, among other acts of cruelty, finding multitudes of Christians assembled together to celebrate Christ's nativity, commanded the church doors where they were met to be shut, and fire to be put to it, which, in a short time, reduced them and the church to ashes.