Folks hellbent on making Christmas about Jesus have almost every aspect of the holiday wrong.
First off, it was a rip-off of Saturnalia which was a Roman holiday of debauchery dedicated to the god Saturn.
When Christians were trying to convert the pagans, they had to 1) get rid of those pagan holidays, and 2) replace them with the more sedate and holier-than-thou holidays of which Christmas is the most full of lies...I mean mistaken history.
They had to clean it up, so they took a few rumors, odds, and ends to at least trade the fun party of Saturn for another reason to convert those pagans to Christianity. So, they made up this whole myth by combining some of the pagan stories and put their guy in the starring role.
First, Jesus was not born in December. That is just their excuse to replace the fun times with their own sorry state of a lie to fool the local yokels.
Things stolen from pagan tradition:
- Virgin birth
- God being born as a human in the dead of winter
- Gift-giving
- Christmas trees and decorations
Much of this has been debunked elsewhere, so I'll leave it to Cracked magazine to give us this theft of a perfectly good pagan party to celebrate the Solstice and to confuse the gullible into thinking their god had anything at all to do with the pagan celebrations.
Six Things People Get Wrong About Christmas
They do mention that the replacement for the pagan Saturnalia wasn't really the start of the whole mess. Saturnalia was a multi-day party held from December 21st to 23rd. Quick! Let's invent a pagan holiday that they can then replace with their own myth. Thus Sol Invictus was born and quickly trashed for their own purposes.
Why December 25th? That has to do with Hippolytus of Rome. He figured it by starting with March 25th, the accepted date of Jesus's death since at least A.D. 200. Add in the fact that, according to Jewish Talmudic tradition, all righteous men died on the same day they were conceived, and Jesus' conception must have also taken place on March 25th. Then basic biology tells us that nine months after conception comes the birth: December 25th.
Did I mention that the Jesus story is derived from a number of precursor heroes who happen to share a number of characteristics? Note that all of these godly sorts lived years (centuries and millennia) before the Jesus story was mashed together. Interesting similarities no?
This is getting too long for anybody to read, so I'll stop here. There is more to say about Christmas trees, wreaths, gift-giving, and (most importantly wassailing). But I'll leave that as your homework. Surely, if you can research COVID to the point you'd rather die than be vaccinated, you can research the holiday you thought you knew. You really don't know jack about it.
Here are some links from actual reliable sources you can begin with. Consider it homework.
https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/articles/when-was-jesus-really-born.aspx
https://haquil.com/blogs/viking/why-did-odin-hang-himself-his-everlasting-quest-for-wisdom
https://www.cracked.com/article_15719_pagan-orgies-to-human-sacrifice-bizarre-origins-christmas.html
https://www.newsweek.com/christmas-tree-origin-story-pagan-tradition-1254178
https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees
https://www.britannica.com/plant/Christmas-tree
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