The Feast of Christmas

The feast of Christmas was celebrated from the very first ages in the Western Church, and it was fixed for December 25 at the end of the third century.  But for a long time the Eastern Church celebrated this feast and the Epiphany conjointly on January 6, under the name, common to both mysteries, of Theophany.  It was only at the end of the fourth century that the Greeks made the Nativity a special feast and began to celebrate it on the same day as the Latins.  It was from this time also that the Western Church began to observe the feast of the Epiphany.