“The pagan
Saturnalia [an eight-day December 17-24 festival] and Brumalia [The
December 25 celebration] were too deeply entrenched in popular
custom to be set aside by Christian influence,”
-
Christmas, New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, p. 48.
"But
let your works shine, says He; Matthew 5:16 but now all our shops and gates
shine! You will now-a-days find more doors of heathens without lamps
and laurel-wreaths than of Christians."
- On Idolatry, by Tertullian (2nd-3rd
century Christian writer), Chapter 15
(http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0302.htm)
"The conflict is
keen at first; the Church authorities fight tooth and nail against these
relics of heathenism, these devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive
paganism is insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual, though losing
much of their meaning, and the Church, weary of denouncing,
comes to wink at them, while the pagan joy in earthly life begins to
colour her own festival."
- Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,
Christian and Pagan,
by Clement A. Miles, p.25