We all know Christmas, Christ Mass, as we know it, to be a Christian veneer on a series of pagan holidays. When I was a boy, Western society knew that Jesus of Nazareth was born on December 25th. When I was a teenager, we knew this was impossible. December was the rainy season in the middle East; no stars would be visible. You can chalk it up to a miracle, but what kind of holy book describes a miracle as mundane? No, something wasn't right. By the time I got to college--and I stress, this was cultural, not personal--we knew the holiday had pagan roots. Humans had celebrated the Winter Solstice since the dawn of the Homo Sapien. Every sun god that has ever existed had a feast at Winter Solstice. It was, after all, the time when the sun disappeared, or "died", for the three darkest days of the year, before returning. In the North, where the Norse worshipped Odin at Yule, this was much realer.
With each phase of knowledge about the past resurfacing, fewer pe…
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