It would not be impossible, and certainly would not be surprising, if Gregory’s expulsion also imperilled his new institution, and that the festival of Christ’s Nativity would have to be re-introduced. At any rate, a late and not very reliable writer, though one not to be passed over in this connection, speaks of the emperor Honorius as having been the means of introducing the feast of Christmas at Constantinople. On the occasion of a visit to Constantinople he persuaded his mother and his brother Arcadius to celebrate the feast of Christmas, and in the Roman manner.[296] This must have taken place after the year 395. In Cappadocia the separation of the two feasts, Epiphany and Christmas, had been effected in 380, at least as far as Nyssa was concerned. For Gregory of Nyssa, in his funeral oration on Basil, speaks of the festival of Christ’s birth as well established.[297] He says the same in his two sermons for the feast of St Stephen. With regard to the circumstances connected with the introduction of the festival at Antioch, we are fully informed by St Chrysostom in a sermon he preached there on the 20th December 386.[298] The festival had been known in Antioch for about ten years already, and a certain party there among the faithful were in the habit of celebrating it publicly, but its official introduction was first effected by Bishop Flavian, who was seconded in this by St John Chrysostom, recently ordained priest in the February of the same year. Chrysostom began his priestly activity with a course of sermons against the thorough-going Arians—the Anomæans. These discourses treat of the nature of God, His incomprehensibility, and triune personality, but the preacher had to interrupt the course from time to time in order to deal with other matters affecting the faithful themselves, such as their superstitious respect for, and imitation of, the Jews and their customs. Some went so far as to regard oaths taken in the synagogue as more sacred and binding than those taken in the church. Many Christians observed the Jewish festivals as well as their own. On this account Chrysostom departed from his first subject and directed his first four sermons against the Jews. Then his eloquence was directed to the task of winning over the faithful of Antioch to the observance of Christmas. It was on the festival of the Antiochene martyr Philogonius that he announced to his hearers that on the following 25th December Christmas would be celebrated for the first time in the Church of Antioch. The day had been observed in the West from the beginning (ἄνωθεν), but only during the last ten years had the knowledge of it penetrated to Antioch. For his own part, he had for a long time made his prayer in secret that the festival should be kept also in Antioch. He had found many, especially of the lower orders, in favour of it, but many, on the other hand, were opposed, and so the introduction of the festival had been delayed.