Halloween
A night of costumes and candy that grew out of the Christian eve of All Saints, carrying Irish and Scottish folk customs whose older roots historians still debate.
Read its history: HalloweenExplore
Roots
Where Christian traditions came from: what the sources document, what the earliest church practiced, and the popular claims about each, rated against the evidence.
How the ratings work
- Established
- Documented in primary sources and accepted by historians.
- Supported
- Good evidence, though some details remain uncertain.
- Debated
- Historians disagree, and there is evidence on more than one side.
- Unverified
- No evidence beyond assertion or much later sources; it may be true, but it can’t be shown.
- Contradicted
- The available evidence points the other way.
Ratings judge historical claims about where a tradition came from, not whether Christians should keep it.
Christmas
The feast of Jesus’ birth, kept on December 25 in Rome by 336. Why that date was chosen is one of the oldest debates in Christian history.
Read its history: ChristmasResurrection Day
The yearly feast of Christ’s death and resurrection, kept since at least the second century as Pascha, Passover. Its English name, Easter, comes from an Anglo-Saxon month.
Read its history: Resurrection DaySunday Worship
Christians have gathered on the first day of the week since the New Testament era. In 321 Constantine made Sunday a civil day of rest; who changed what, and when, is still argued.
Read its history: Sunday WorshipEarly Church Leadership
How local elders and overseers became bishops and how Rome’s bishop rose to prominence, with the claim that Simon Magus founded a counterfeit church in Rome.
Read its history: Early Church Leadership