Doug,

>The December 25th date of the celebration of Christ's birth happened as a direct result of the Church of Rome attempting to co-opt pagan holidays as Christian holidays. Didn't work. <g> Now, rather than celibrating the goddess of fertility we celibrate the god of materialism. <g>
>

I'm not quite sure on this. I believe that the tradition of celebrating during the pagan holidays pre-dated the Roman Church, and was done to avoid drawing attention to themselves (because of persecution).