CHRISTMAS

See also:

• CHRISTMAS EVANS (1766-1838)
• EVANS, EVAN HERBER (1836-1896)
• EVANS, OLIVER (1755–1819)
• EVANS, SIR GEORGE DE LACY (1787–1870)
• EVANS, SIR JOHN (1823-1908)

EVANS (1766-1838)  , Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born near the village of Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, on the 25th of December 1766 . His father, a shoemaker, died early, and the boy grew up as an illiterate farm labourer . At the age of seventeen, becoming servant to a Presbyterian minister, David Davies, he was affected by a religious revival and learned to read and write in English and Welsh . The itinerant Calvinistic Methodist preachers and the members of the Baptist church at Llandyssul further influenced him, and he soon joined the latter denomination . In 1789 he went into North Wales as a preacher and settled for two years in the desolate peninsula of Lleyn, Carnarvonshire, whence he removed to Llangefni in Anglesey . Here, on a stipend of X17 a year, supplemented by a little tract-selling, he built up a strong Baptist community, modelling his organization to some extent on that of the Calvinistic Methodists . Many new chapels were built, the money being' collected on preaching tours which Evans undertook in South Wales . In 1826 Evans accepted an invitation to Caerphilly, where he remained for two years, removing in 1828 to Cardiff . In 1832, in response to urgent calls from the north, he settled in Carnarvon and again undertook the old work of building and collecting . He was taken ill on a tour in South Wales, and died at Swansea on the 19th of July 1838 . In spite of his early disadvantages and personal disfigurement (he had lost an eye in a X . 1 youthful brawl), Christmas Evans was a remarkably powerful preacher .

To a natural aptitude for this calling he

united a nimble mind and an inquiring spirit; his character was simple, his piety humble and his faith fervently evangelical . For a time he came under Sandemanian influence, and when the Wesleyans entered Wales he took the Calvinist side in the bitter controversies that were frequent from 1800 to 1810 . His chief characteristic was a vivid and affluent imagination, which absorbed and controlled all his other powers, and earned for him the name of " the Bunyan of Wales." His works were edited by Owen Davies in 3 vols . (Carnarvon, 1895-1897) . See the Lives by D . R . Stephens (1847) and Paxton Hood (1883) .