Let us celebrate this season of the year with feasting and carousing, with good cheer in good company, with music and laughter. 

December 25 was not the birthday of that tragic rabbi, “Jesus” of Nazareth; nor claimed to be for St Paul’s (completely different and totally fictitious) “Jesus Christ”.

December 25 was only chosen as the day of the Christian god’s earthly birth (from the womb of a virgin!) in the third century CE at the earliest.

A Christian source states authoritatively:

The eventual choice of December 25, made perhaps as early as 273, reflects a convergence of Origen’s concern about pagan gods and the church’s identification of God’s son with the celestial sun. December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman “birth of the unconquered sun”), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness” whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the true deity [haw-haw, yeah, sure – ed], church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.

The day has been called “Christmas” for some 1,841 years.

So we say to our frequent readers, casual visitors, highly valued commenters, critics, and even our less insulting abusers:

We wish you a Very Merry Christmas!