>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).

George,

Well, at that point in history the Church of Rome was pretty much the world force; setting up & deposing kings, etc. Of course, there were the Borgias who were pretty influential as well and who were ccontemporaries of the Roman Catholic Church of those days as power brokers.

The Church of Rome in those days was just about as corrupt an institution as you can have. Homosexual and adultrous popes. Selling indulgences (positions & power) for huge sums of money. Persecuting and killing true believers. Etc, etc, etc.. This is a huge reason why so many in today's world are bitter towards organized religions. There have been some incredibly horrendous crimes committed in God's name.