The Son has returned

or rather, the SUN has returned.

3 days after the shortest day of the year, we can finally measure that the days are getting longer (when I say we I mean the people that lived 1500 to 3000 or more years ago).

Hence the ancient festival to celebrate the end of shorter days and the eventual return of spring and growth (and therefore food)

Early Christians, never ones to miss a beat, decided to co-opt this mid-winter festival as the birth of Christ, even though there is plenty of evidence from the bible that the birth of Christ was not anywhere near December 25th.

As for the modern traditions of Christmas...

First, there was a Turkish monk named Nicholas, who was eventually named the patron saint of children... and who started the tradition of giving gifts to orphan children on Christ's mass (or Christmas, again now on Dec 25th).

As for Santa Claus, or Sinter Claus... those were mostly co-opted from Nordic legends and folklore.

There were a group of itinerant shamans who would visit homestead to homestead in the winter time (Finland, Sweden, Norway, northern Germany). They would travel by sleigh (possibly pulled by reindeer ?), they would dress in clothing that represented their favorite drug... a brightly colored red mushroom with white dots (which, when processed, provided them with a hallucinatory high, one might even say they flew!). They would often find the homes they visited to be so buried in snow that the doors and windows would be blocked... and so enter through the roof (using the open "chimney" or smoke evacuation hole, not a fireplace chimney as we think of today). They would bring news and trade goods from the neighbors as they made their rather dangerous visits and so were most welcome to the isolated farms. Their arrival was marked with a feast in their honor (or at least a larger than average meal).

So... start with a Roman mid-winter holiday, with more lights (candles) and green trees (evergreens) and other winter foliage (holly, mistletoe) to ward off the mid-winter blues, co-opted to be a celebration of the birth of Christ (wrong birthday, but hey). mix in with the legend of the Turkish saint (definitely NOT WHITE) of St. Nick, and layered with tales of northern Scandinavian shamans and their psychedelic mushrooms (and coats made to resemble that mushroom)... add in some Coca-Cola marketing and British royalty (mixed with imported German royalty) traditions... and

Merry Christmas!