I was watching The Mclaughlin Group this evening, and easily the most interesting moment of the night was when the English conservative (whose name escapes me at the moment) dared to insinuate that Christmas had a Pagan origin.

You should have seen Tony Blankely jump out of his skin to try out the latest factoid from The War on Christmas: that the (presumptively pagan) Romans created an imperially-recognized Winter Solstice festival shortly *after* the Christians began celebrating Christmas on December 25th, therefore, the Christians are the originators of the tradition and all assertions to the contrary are dirty, dirty, filthy little lies. I made that last bit up.

In any event, I couldn’t stop giggling at the assumtion, even if the limited set of facts presented are true. First of all, the Romans were by that point in history fond of making holidays for damned-near anything. That one of those happened to coincide with the solstice is hardly relevant. But far more importantly, there are literally untold thousands of pagan cultures that exist or have existed in human cultures, of which the Romans are but one. All of those that I am familiar with have solstice celebrations. This includes the Inca, whom hardly had a stake in Christian/Roman affairs at the time Tony’s research highlights.

Sorry, dude. No. “Wrong!!!! Next question. . . .”