The Puritans believed that Christmas was a Christian veneer on a pagan holiday, which, being a Puritan, is my argument about Gnosticism, a thin Christian veneer on pagan religion.
The Southerners celebrated Christmas, still do, with all the trappings; caroling, Christmas Trees, gifts, Santa.
IT is separate from the religion, as Liturgist stated
The Puritan position makes no sense, because the same people who added the Feast of the Nativity to the liturgical calendar are the same people who opposed Gnosticism with such vigor. In the fourth century, Patristic giants like St. Augustine, St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Epiphanius of Salamis, and others, were directing great effort at fighting off not only Arianism but also the remaining Gnostic sects first detailed by St. Irenaeus of Lyons in his second century classic Against Heresies, and also new Gnostic sects, particularly Manichaeanism, of which Augustine was a member before he was baptized by St. Ambrose of Milan (and then the two of them composed the ancient hymn Te Deum Laudamus, which has become as important as the Evangelical Canticles).
It was during this same time that in every church except Armenia, the Feast of the Nativity was differentiated from the Feast of Theophany, or Epiphany, also known as the Feast of the Baptism of Christ (which in the West later lost some of its meaning with a shifted focus to the three Magi, but since that time there has been a renewed focus on the Baptism of our Lord, and many people are now baptized on Epiphany in, for example, the Anglican and Episcopalian churches, just as the Eastern churches like to baptize on Easter Even. Armenians continue to celebrate the Nativity of Christ together with his baptism on January 6th, except in Jerusalem where the Julian Calendar is still used by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox (the Roman Catholics and Protestants use the Gregorian Calendar, which is good because it reduces overcrowding at the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Nativity, the Temple Mount, and other locations, including one of the two possible locations of the Cenacle*, and as a result the final celebrations of Christmas each year in Jerusalem take place together with the celebration of Theophany by all Eastern churches, such as the Eastern Orthodox Great Blessing of the Waters, when the Jordan famously flows backwards, on January 18th according to the Gregorian Calendar.
Now, if there was any problem at all with commemorating the Nativity, the physical birth of the Incarnation of the Word of God, when the divine Logos, very God of very God, of one essence with the Father, put on humanity, one would expect the likes of Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Ambrose, Augustine and Epiphanius to be outraged. After all, they were not afraid of going against the grain, fighting the Empire to defend the Council of Nicea after the evil Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia weaseled his way into the palace, baptized Emperor Constantine on his death bed, and gained control over his Eastern heir Constantius on ecclesiastical affairs, leading to St. Athanasius being exiled by an illegal fake ecumenical council, known in antiquity and to scholars as a Latrocinium, or “Robber Synod,” and illictly replaced by an Arian bishop. The people protested and were attacked. Arianism only became popular among those populations the Arians evangelized aggressively, which included sailors in Constantinople and Antioch who he wrote songs for using popular melodies of the day stressing Arian Christology, and most successfully the Visigoths, but it was the Imperial religion from the death of St. Constantine until the coronation of St. Theodosius around 380, and fairly brutal persecution was used in an ill fated attempt to promote it.
What people of your belief concerning th Feast of the Nativity don’t get, and what makes the false accusation that Christmas is Pagan so offensive to Anglicans, Assyrians, most Baptists, Congregationalists, the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, Dutch Reformed denominations in Europe and America**, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholics, traditional Evangelicals, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, Old Catholics, Oriental Orthodox, most Presbyterians**, Roman Catholics, Russian Old Rite Orthodox, the Uniting Churches of Australia and Canada and the United Reformed Church of Great Britain, and the Waldensians, among other traditional Nicene Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Christians, as well as some newer, less traditional, but still Nicene, Trinitarian movements such as nearly all Pentecostals, the Calvary Chapel, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the majority of “non-denominational” churches, is that the birth of Jesus Christ is the birth of God, the beginning of the Incarnation. Had our Savior not been born of a woman, fully God and fully man, in a hypostatic or natural union according to Chalcedon and St. Cyril respectively, he would not have been in a position to glorify fallen humanity by atoning for our sins and healing our fallen nature through his life, passion and resurrection.
So important is the Nativity that we date our calendars from the approximate year of his birth, except for the Coptic Christians of Egypt, whose calendar epoch is based on the start of the incredibly severe Diocletian Persecutions, in which so many Egyptians and other Christians were martyred, including Pope Paul of Alexandria***, and the Assyrians, who use a reconstruction of the ancient Assyrian Calendar. The Calendar Epoch used by the Byzantine Empire was based on the number of years thought to have passed simce God created the world in Genesis, and this replaced the Roman epoch, The Year of the City, which as the name implies was based on the number of years elapsed since the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus, but this system sees only minor use among some Greek Orthodox today, and this is as it should be, for what could be better and less Pagan than to base our calendar either on an approximate date of the birth of Christ, or the exact date when the worst martyrdom conducted by Pagans against Christians began?
And likewise, what could possibly be less Pagan than to celebrate the incarnation of God in the person of Christ Jesus, as foretold bynthe prophets, and to celebrate the heroic martyrdom of the early Christians who followed in his footsteps, to whom our Lord, in warning of the danger of martyrdom, also promised salvation for martyrs, and blessings for those persecuted for belief in Him?
For this reason, both the Puritan opposition to Christian and the mass destruction of relics of martyrs in England, the mortal remains and personal affects of those who followed Christ even to the death, strikes me as completely wrong theologically, and the insistence that these things are Pagan offends me. My tradition, Congregationalism, was once Puritan, but in the 18th century, when we took stock of the moral failures of Cotton Mather and Increase Mather with the Salem Witch Trials, it became clear that we needed to change. Semper Reformanda. And soon we found ourselves confronted by a schism in which many of our oldest churches, including the oldest surviving church in North America, the Old Ship Church in Rhode Island, and most of our churches in Boston, except for Park Street Church, now a part of the traditionsl Congregational denomination and perhaps the most important conservative Congregational church in the US, as well as our main university, Harvard, rejected Christianity and embraced Unitarianism, a cult worse than Arianism, because the Arians at least admitted Christ was the Son of God and deserving of worship; their mistake was denying the Trinity, denying that Christ was God incarnate, denying that Christ was of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and insisting that He was created by God, rather than begotten of The Father before all ages. So American Congregationalism in the 19th century focused on containing the spread of Unitarianism, and American and British Congregationalism really reached their zenith over the two hundred years that stretched from the beginnings of the Unitarian heresy to the tragic takeover of the United Church of Christ by extreme liberals who in some cases embrace many of the errors of the Unitarian Universalists, including universalism, a denial of the Incarnation, and the incorporation of actual pagan ceremonies into the worship.
So it is ironic that the Puritans of New England, who were in error concerning what was and was not Pagan, wound up with the exception of a minority of churches either embracing Unitarian Universalism and routinely incorporating actual Paganism into their worship, or becoming a part of the UCC, which is a Nicene Church, but liturgical abuses similiar to those in the Episcopal Church and the ELCA (which have in the Bay Area an Episcopalian church with a universalist priest, dedicated to St. Gregory of Nyssa, who they think was Universalist, which incorporates elements of Shinto and other non-Christian religions into their worship, and “herchurch”, formerly Ebeneezer Lutheran Church, where Christ has been swept away or “reimagined” as a female, and “Mother Goddess Rosaries” with an idol of Aurora instead of a Crucifix, are sold. In the case of the UCC, no specific congregation that I can think of has slipped into such a bad state, but rather, liturgical abuses of a Pagan nature, often under the influence of the UUA, who some in the UCC would love to merge with, are distributed across many parishes. There are 75 Faithful and Welcoming parishes, consisting in many cases of ethnic congregations like the Hungarian Reformed Church in Los Angeles, which are doctrinally solid, and there are also a great many liberal parishes which are still steadfast in their Christianity, but the atmosphere has become toxic for traditionalists like myself, so I left.
* There are two possible sites for the Cenacle in Jerusalem, one, a Syriac Orthodox monastery, and the other, a site disputed between Islam, some Christians, and Judaism, which is presently under Islamic control but consists of a Gothic structure built by the Crusaders over what the Jews believe is the Tomb of David, so it is a real mess; I personally think that it is the Tomb of David, and that the house of St. Mark was much more low key, and much more likely to be the Monastery of St. Mark owned by the Syriac Orthodox Church; that monastery, is at the top of my list, followed in no particular order by the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross, the aforementioned St. Catharines in Sinai, sthe Coptic Monastery of St. Anthony in Egypt, some of the beautiful monasteries in Romania and the former Soviet Union, and various Benedictine monasteries in Western Europe, and Mount Athos or Meteora, would be very appealing if I ever become a monk, which would be admittedly an unusual career choice for a Congregationalist pastor, but if I fail to get married and am left without a family, it would make sense.
** The three great televangelists of the 20th century were the Roman Catholic Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Reverend Robert Shuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral, and part of the Reformed Church in America, one of the continental Reformed churches in the US of Dutch Reformed heritage, which put on a spectacular Christmas show; I attended the 2009 service, which was one of the last before a quarell between the Shullers and the Board caused the Crystal Cathedral to file for bankruptcy; it was acquired by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County and is now their Cathedral; graciously, the funeral for Rev. Shuller was held in the refurbished Christ Church Cathedral as it is now called, and he was buried next to his wife in the churchyard, and finally, Dr. James Kennedy of the beautiful Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, who I did see in person, and greatly admired as one of the best preachers of our era, and whose church, part of the traditionalist Presbyterian Church in America, had under his leadership a majestic program of traditional church music with a first-rate organist, choir, bell choir, brass choir and trumpeters, and an excellent liturgy; his last ever sermon, and perhaps his most beautiful, was on Christmas Eve in 2006, before his tragic and premature death from a heart attack that left him disabled for the final months of his life until he reposed in August of 2007, a fitting end to a great career which alas ended too soon.