Jesus! It's hard to accept the fact that so much militant simplemindedness and fundamental historical illiteracy exists, even among scuba divers.
Maybe Jesus was born on the Fourth Of July and votes Republican.
Virtually ALL cultures that existed in the northern hemisphere had major celebrations at or near the Winter Solstice, the point at which days stopped getting shorter and began slowly lengthening. This occurs in late December. Most 'Christmas' activity is pre-Christian, including giving gifts, dragging trees into the house, burning the yule log, having massive public celebrations, etc. The idiots who whine about putting Christ into Christmas forget that the celebration was actually highjacked by Christians, stolen from several earlier traditions, both religious and otherwise. In the Pagan world, it was such a beautiful and wildly popular holiday that the early Christian church stopped trying to eradicate it. Wisely, they adoped it instead, and gave it a Christian identity: Jesus' birthday. This wasn't until the 4th Century. Before then, the early Christian churches tried to stamp the holiday out. Some hard core fundamentalists still do, and many early Protestants (like the Pilgrims) refused to celebrate Christmas, regarding it (correctly) as Roman Paganism, misrepresented as Christianity. The unquenchable power and popularity of this glorious celebration overwhelmed even these soreheads and killjoys.
December 25th was for centuries celebrated as the birthday of Mithra, a major God eventually worshipped in many cultures. The cult of Mithra was originally Persian (Iranian), but was very popular in Rome and elsewhere before the Christian era. The Romans also celebrated Sol Invictus, the invincible sun, on December 25th, long before Christians decided that Jesus was born on that date. The December Saturnalia identified with the old (year), followed by the Juvenalia, a celebration of the young, with gifts given to children, was an integral part of Roman religion. Winter Solstice celebrations are fundamental to the traditions of all European pagan religion, and traces of it persist. People who exchange gifts and place holly and evergreen wreaths in their homes are right in step with what Europeans did 3000 years ago. Some of these ancient holidays were presided over by Magi: magicians.
The decision to place Christ's birthdate at December 25th was done for purely pragmatic and political reasons, after the Christians gained control in the ancient world. Demonstrating that some great celestial phenomenon occured in late December two millenia ago validates Roman Pagan religion and the cult of Mithra, not contemporary Christian beliefs.
