Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25? Is Christmas really a “baptized” pagan holiday? William J. Tighe answers these questions in “Calculating Christmas” at Touchstone Magazine.
Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.
