> The Son's resurrection/ascension/whatever
>event people like to use. A change, certainly,
>but it doesn't change what He said.
>
> Nyperold

I understand the analogy, but it's still a specious argument. Because you're assuming that the pagans who celebrated Christmas as a winter festival celebrated it the way we now celebrate Christmas secularly.

More appropriately, instead of starting to serve the man liver again, she starts serving him baked potatos instead. Maybe he likes potatos. Maybe he doesn't. But the potatos have no relation to the liver that came before it.

Because pagans once celebrated a day around the time of the winter solstice with their own religious traditions doesn't in any way impact what Christians have done with December 25th nor does it have any bearing on the secular aspects of Christmas today.

I can understand not celebrating December 25 as the birth of Christ on the grounds that it's a pretty fair bet the Jesus described in the Bible wasn't born on that day at all, but I can't understand not celebrating it just because some pagans once also used that day to celebrate something completly different, or because some non-Christians today have developed a secular celebration for that day as well. I'd think that if you're going to pick a day to celebrate Jesus' birthday on, you might just as well keep the one that people have been observing for centuries. I can see throwing out Santa Claus and all the other (now) secular stuff if you want to keep it a strictly religious observance, but just deciding NOT to celebrate what in your religion is probably the second most important day in history (the first would be the day of the ressurection AKA Easter) just because some people decided to co-opt your holiday or some people preceded you with an unrelated celebration on that day strikes me as foolish.

-- Dave