The first reference to December 25 as the Nativity of Jesus occurs in a section of the Chronography of AD 354 known as the Calendar of Philocalus, which, even by this late date, still identified December 17 as ludi Saturnalia.

Half a century later, when Macrobius wrote the Saturnalia, he placed the celebration in the house of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, a pagan aristocrat who once had served as praetorian prefect during the reign of Valentinian II and been consul designate before his death. A correspondent of Symmachus (Letters, I.44-55), he was characterized by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus as "a senator of noble character and old-time dignity" (Roman History, XXII.7.6.), an honest and upright man who, "although he did nothing to gain favour, yet everything that he did was looked upon with favour" (XXVII.9.8-10).

When Praetextatus died in AD 384, the death was scornfully dismissed by Jerome (the translator of the Latin Vulgate). "A few days ago the highest dignitaries of the city walked before him as he ascended the ramparts of the capitol like a general celebrating a triumph; the Roman people leapt up to welcome and applaud him, and at the news of his death the whole city was moved. Now he is desolate and naked, a prisoner in the foulest darkness, and not, as his unhappy wife falsely asserts, set in the royal abode of the milky way" (Letters, XXIII.3). He is referring to a eulogy that the wife of Praetextatus, Aconia Fabia Paulina, herself the daughter of a consul, had written for her husband of forty years and later had inscribed on his funeral monument. Rather, Jerome asserts, he is "in Tartarus [hell]" (XXIII.2).

December 17 was recognized as the date of the Saturnalia as late as AD 448, when it was notated in the ecclesiastical calendar or laterculus ("list") of Polemius Silvius. But now, deprived of its pagan significance, it is identified only as feriae servorum ("festival of the slaves").