Side by side with the establishment of Christmas proceeded the ecclesiastical denunciation of those pagan festivals whose place it was to take. Little is heard in Christian times of the _Saturnalia_, which do not seem to have shared the popularity of the Kalends outside the limits of Rome itself. But these latter, and especially the Kalends, are the subject of attack in every corner of the empire. Jerome of Rome, Ambrose of Milan, Maximus of Turin, Chrysologus of Ravenna, assail them in Italy; Augustine in Africa; Chrysostom and Asterius and the Trullan council in the East. In Spain, Bishop Pacian of Barcelona made a treatise upon one of the most objectionable features of the festival which, as he says with some humour, probably tended to increase its vogue. In Gaul, Caesarius of Arles initiated a vigorous campaign. To cite all the ecclesiastical pronouncements on the subject would be tedious. Homily followed homily, canon followed canon, capitulary followed capitulary, penitential followed penitential, for half a thousand years. But the Kalends died hard. When Boniface was tackling them amongst the Franks in the middle of the eighth century, he was sorely hampered by the bad example of their continued prevalence at the very gates of the Vatican; and when Burchardus was making his collection of heathen observances in the eleventh century, those of the Kalends were still to be included. In England there is not much heard of them, but a reference in the so-called _Penitential of Egbert_ about 766 proves that they were not unknown. It need hardly be said that all formal religious celebration of the Kalends disappeared with the official victory of Christianity. But this element had never been of great importance in the feast; and the terms in which the ecclesiastical references from beginning to end are couched prove that they relate mainly to popular New Year customs common to the Germanic and the more completely Latinized populations[855]. It appears from a decree of the council of Tours in 567 that, _ad calcandam Gentilium consuetudinem_, the fourth-century Fathers established on the first three days of January a _triduum ieiunii_, with litanies, in spite of the fact that these days fell in the very midst of the festal period of the _Dodecahemeron_[856]. At the same time January 1 was kept as the octave of Christmas, and the early Roman ritual-books show two masses for that day, one _in octavis Domini_, the other _ad prohibendum ab idolis_. The Jewish custom by which circumcision took place eight days after birth made it almost inevitable that there should be some celebration of the circumcision of Christ upon the octave of his Nativity. This was the case from the sixth century, and ultimately, about the eighth, the attempt to keep up a fast on January 1 was surrendered, and the festival of the Circumcision took its place[857].