Good points, Dave.

The Catholic Church took a pagan celebration and made it their own.

The pagan celebration was probably not on December 21st as you are proffering.

Weihnachten, for instance, is plural and indicates that Xmas is a multi-day event, not one of a precise moment. I am pretty sure it was difficult for these folks in the old days to pinpoint when the days stopped getting shorter or were lengthening, and by Dec 24, 25 or so, they could finally tell the days were getting longer (ever so slightly). I am therefore more inclined to think that the Catholic church took the celebration as it had been celebrated at that time by the pagan folks.

They were not the first to do a little bit of stealing. The Jews stole Easter from the Egyptians who were celebrating the coming flooding of the Nile based on the first spring moon.

I believe the closest view we have now on Jesus' birthday is that the calendar is off by two perhaps even as many as six years.

And of course, the story itself is happening somewhere in springtime, so definitely not at the beginning of winter.

Thank you for reading the article, Dave.