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For its first three centuries, the Christian church knew no birthday for its savior. During the 4th century there was much argument about adoption of a date. Some favored the popular date of the Koreion, when the divine Virgin gave birth to the new Aeon in Alexandria. (Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image, 1974). Now called Twelfth Night or Epiphany, this date is still the official nativity in Armenian churches, and celebrated with more pomp than Christmas by the Greek Orthodox. (C. A. Miles, Christmas Customs and Traditions, 1975).

Roman churchmen tended to favor the Mithraic Winter-Solstice festival called Dies Natalis Solis Invictus, Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. (Salomon Reinach, Orpheus, 1930). Blended with the Greek sun-festival of the Helia by the Emperor Aurelian, this December 25 nativity also honored such gods as Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Syrian Baal, and other versions of the solar son of man who bore such titles as Light of the World, Sun of Righteousness, and Savior. (Homer Smith, Man and His Gods, 1952).

Most pagan Mysteries celebrated the birth of the Divine Child at the Winter Solstice. Norsemen celebrated the birthday of their Lord, Frey, at the nadir of the sun in the darkest days of winter, known to them as Yule. Early in the 4th century the Roman church adopted December 25 because the people were used to calling it a god's birthday. But eastern churches refused to honor it until 375 A.D. (Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough). The fiction that some record existed in the land of Jesus's alleged birth certainly could not be upheld, for the church of Jerusalem continued to ignore the official date until the 7th Century. (Miles, Christmas Customs and Traditions).

Trappings such as Yule logs, gifts, lights, mistletoe, holly, carols, feasts and processions were altogether pagan. They were drawn from worship of the Goddess as Mother of the Divine Child. Christmas trees evolved from the pinea silva, pine groves attached to temples of the Great Mother...

Christmas celebrations remained so obviously pagan over the years that many churchmen bitterly denounced their "carnal pomp and jollity." Polydor Virgil said "Dancing, masques, mummeries, stageplays, and other such Christmas disorders now in use with Christians, were derived from these Roman Saturnalian and Bacchanalian festivals; which should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them." (W. C. Hazlitt, Faiths and Folklore of the British Isles, 1965). Puritans in 17th century Massachusetts tried to ban Christmas altogether because of its overt heathenism. (Claudia de Lys, The Giant Book of Superstitions, 1979). Inevitably, the attempt failed.