@RationalLeft Most educated Christian believer agree that it wasn't Dec 25 at all even though no one truly knows. Some have concluded that it was in the Spring for that's when census & tax time usually is and was supposedly the reason for travel.
Having said that, the story is unlikely to begin with. Can you imagine a whole country uprooting to travel home to be part of a mandatory census?

@Mikethewander1 There's no historical record of any such census.

The shepherds abiding in the fields by night has also been pointed to as a spring phenomenon.

@RationalLeft @Mikethewander1

The whole "Giftmas is pagan" thing is only quasi-true. As a decades long atheopagan, a lot of the actual history was my area of interest, the real "roots."

Or modern holiday traditions are as much from Christianity as any pagan source: it's a shared history.

A touch on the basics: https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-christmas-in-december

Also, as a starting point (check the scholastic sources): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

Solstice, Yule, Christmas, Channukah, whatevs: let's be nice to each other.

@FernLovebond @Mikethewander1 That is of course true. Christmas has many pagan elements, but also many Christian elements.

The puritans felt that the former irretrievably tainted the latter.

@FernLovebond @Mikethewander1 Indeed, there was more the puritans objected to - the medieval and Tudor traditions of social inversion and "misrule" around Christmas, which lingered into the 19th century.

@RationalLeft @Mikethewander1

I should also say that the source of our modern lavishness over this holiday is really not as much about pagan or Christian sources as Charles Dickens and that insipid holiday story of his.

https://www.librarypoint.org/blogs/post/dickens-christmas/

Bah! Humbug,

@FernLovebond Fused with the German traditions imported by Prince Albert.