Who invented Advent? The easy answer to that question is, we,
the church, did. The feasts and seasons of the liturgical year
all developed from the church’s desire to remember, celebrate,
and live the great mysteries of our faith. The answer gets more
complicated when we realize that these seasons originated
centuries ago and developed independently in different places,
spreading, combining, and sometimes dying out. Before we can
talk about Advent, we have to talk about Christmas, obviously,
and, less obviously, Epiphany. We know for certain that
Christians in Rome were celebrating the birth of Christ on
December 25 in the year 336. This date may have been chosen as a
Christian response to a pagan Roman festival honoring the
“Unconquered Sun-God,” from clues detected in scripture, or for
both reasons. Epiphany also may have begun in response to pagan
celebrations in the Eastern church, probably in Egypt. Epiphany
celebrated not only the coming of the Magi, but also Jesus’
birth, his first miracle at the weddi