What do you think of this statement?

[rinselberg]

The celebration of Christ's birthday (Christmas) was moved from January to December to coincide with a pagan holiday - a gimmick to convert [more] pagans - so technically, the lower case "christmas" would be correct ...

There is no certainty about the exact year of Christ's birth; even less, the specific day and month. Not even the season. It could have been spring, summer, fall or winter.

That December pagan holiday as referenced (above) could well have been a celebration of a popular sun deity that would later be known as "Sol Invictus", rendered in English as "the Unconquerable or Invincible Sun". On the Roman calendar, the winter solstice fell on December 24. Starting on December 25, the daily interval of sunlight would start increasing again. Which provides a certain logic for a winter holiday dedicated to a sun god.



Sol Invictus (the Unconquerable Sun) as depicted in Roman sculpture.


Source: http://www.toolong.com/sol.htm



Jurassic Post
Two hundred million years distant in time. One mouse click in cyberspace.

[Spexvet]

There is no certainty about the exact year of Christ's birth; even less, the specific day and month. Not even the season. It could have been spring, summer, fall or winter.
....

The exact date of Jesus' birth is a mystery. About the best we can do is to narrow it down to seasons. The Bible does give us one clue. The shepherds were in the fields with their flocks at night when Jesus was born. This clearly indicates that Jesus was born during the warmer seasons. During the coldest months like December or January, the shepherds didn't sleep in the fields but would bring their flocks into corals. There is virtual agreement among scholars that December 25 is not the birth date, not even the month that Jesus was born.

from here.

[GOS_Queen]

Spexvet -

Great article - it outlines some of the points I have "problems" with in regards to Christmas - (the magi were not at the birth, the bible does not specify to celebrate His birth). As I have studied the Hebrew roots of Christianity, I personally feel His birth could have been, as the article you referenced, during the birthing season of the lambs, or it could have been during the fall festival (feast of tabernacles ?) when "God is with us".

[Spexvet]

And:

Why a Dec. 25 celebration?

The church adopted Dec. 25—the date of the Roman Brumalia, immediately after Saturnalia—as the date of Christ's birth (even though biblical evidence shows this cannot be the right time of this event).
This date also marked a great festival in Mithraism, the Persian religion of the sun god. In A.D. 274 Emperor Aurelian of Rome declared Dec. 25 to be the "birthday of the invincible sun." In time the Son of God, Jesus Christ, became indistinguishable from the pagan sun god in the minds of hundreds of thousands of converts throughout the Roman Empire.
Instead of standing as Christ's force for change in the world, nominal Christianity was changed by the pagan world it was supposed to transform!

from here