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Timing of Christmas:

Long before the birth of Jesus, it was already the tradition to celebrate the last five days of each year. Our primitive ancesters had long known that the moon waxes and wanes over a period of approximately 30 days, and this happens approximately 12 times as seasons change from cold to warm and back to cold. These two observations fix the idea of the 30 day month and 12 month year, which has 360 days. However, this is again only approximate, and the actual duration of a year is approximately 365 days; hence there are 5 "extra" days, and whereas the 360 "regular" days are meant for "serious" living, the 5 "extra" days are use for not so "serious" activities. But which 5 days? During each year there are four "special" days: the summer solstice when the sun rises highest at noon, the two equinoxes when day are night are the same length, and the winter solstice when the noon sun is the lowest. The 5 days after the winter solstice are less "serious" since they fall outside the agricultural seasons. In other words, the 5 day festivities ought to coincide with the winter solstice. Unfortunately, our ancesters were not so accurate with their calendar calculations; in fact, the four-year leap cycle, minus the multiples of 100, was a fairly recent invention. Without these leap year adjustments, the calendar days would soon move out of synch with the sun cycle. Therefore, though festival day was meant to coincide with the winter solstice over 5 days counting backwards from year end, the actual day used, 25 December, is slightly off both requirements, being 3 days after winter solstice and 7 days from year end.

The designation of 25 December as the birthday of Jesus was a papal decision, like the Queen's birthday public holiday in UK (and some other Commonwealth countries) whose timing is entirely independent of the actual day of her birth. 26 December used to be known as Boxing Day, when you give boxes with presents to friends. In other words, 25 December is meant to be the end of the "serious" year, while 26 December the start of the"extra", festival period, with the first activity being the exchange of presents and good will.

Nativity:

The pagan content of Christmas is shown in various details of the story about the birth of Jesus. First, why was Joseph and Mary travelling so close to her confinement day? There are several clues to the story: they were travelling west to east, away from the coastal region occupied by Phoenicians, whose religious practice required the sacrifice of the first child; King Herod was supposed to have ordered all the newborns to be killed in an effort to kill Jesus, a story that did not make much sense (especially as the effort failed in its objective, and he seemed to have forgotten to continue to hunt for Jesus afterwards), but actually merely reflected this Phoenician practice. (The death of first born sons of all Egyptian households in Exodus reflected the same practice.) Joseph and Mary were thereforing rushing back to the Jewish area where first child sacrifice was not practised.

It is highly realistic to believe that on the way home they were allowed by a farmer to spend the night in his barn, and Mary gave birth there. Whether it was during the period when a comet or supernova was visible in the sky, I am not certain - someone may have later linked two historically significant events together. The worship of the three magis (which appears in only one Gospel) is such a pagan tale that I consider it obviously an add-on by a storyteller - the offer of spice, gold, etc, is reminiscent of the Chinese worship practice of offers of wine, jade and silk by three wise men.

Numbers

some related thoughts from the calender issues

360 is an important number; like the trajectory of earth around sun containing approximately 360 earth days, the circle is divided into 360 degrees, (but when clocks were invented, each hour was divided into 60 minutes, not 360 which would be too hard to mark around the circumference of the clock dial for the minute needle for point to individually. With 60 minutes, each of the 12 hour slots is divided into 5 minutes slots - 50 would be difficult.)10 is also an important number since humans have 10 digits on their hands, which they used for counting. 360 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 but not by 7; hence, 7 is a special number. There is therefore nothing surprising about the mystical and religious significance attached to 7 in various cultures. Christmas day is actually day 7 of the year counting backwards - December used to have 30 days as all even months were short and odd months were long; the Romans changed it to add one day to August, the birth month of Emperor Augustus