I would like to explain things about the Christmas celebration as a daughter of a Christian pastor (evangelical, fundamental denomination). When my step-father was in the theological seminary, I got to study a lot about Christian history and its effects on Europe and the Western world. There are a lot of things that most people do not hear about. It was great reading about church history when my step father was in the Christian pastors' college in the early 1970s. We saw evidence about the very early believers on when they celebrated Jesus' birthday, and it wasn't December 25. Christmas (like Easter) was created by the Christian church in its early history by the church fathers to help the pagan converts stay within the defined bounds of Christianity while being able to keep their old pagan festivals.

Here are some sites on the inspirations given to the gentile Church Fathers to make pagan holidays as the birth date of Jesus instead of celebrating the holidays that the Bible says (and also the winter festival of John chapter 10, the festival of dedication):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule

http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/christmas/history.html

http://www.locksley.com/6696/xmas.htm

http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Christmas---History-and-Trivia-for-Parties&id=356716

(Saturn's festival in late December with garlands and candles got absorbed by the Church Fathers)
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/holidaysfestivals/a/solsticeceleb.htm

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/calendar/saturnalia.html

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/Saturnalia.html

http://www.novaroma.org/religio_romana/saturnalia.html

And how we got the month of January right after December:
http://www.circlesanctuary.org/pholidays/SaturnaliaInfo.html

http://www.funmunch.com/events/christmas/origin.html

http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/1104/news/history_origin_christmas.html?1132370475015

http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/tracts/tract3.html

http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm

http://www.biblequestions.org/archives/BQAR092.htm

http://www.hope-of-israel.org/christ~3.htm
http://www.hope-of-israel.org/cmas1.htm

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina21224.htm

http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/pagan.htm

http://inin.essortment.com/christmasholida_rfju.htm

http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p235.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061219/lf_afp/afplifestyleireland_061219151151

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16156203.htm

These types of pagan festivals, such as this festival to contact the dead ancestors and the spirit deities, were "adopted" by the gentile Church Fathers in the third and fourth centuries.

The Church Fathers did this as ways for the pagan converts to still be "Christians" and yet have their previous pagan festivals become newly-made Christian holidays without having to follow the Biblical festivals like the Chanukkah winter festival mentioned in the gospels (and thus have the converts get too close to acting like the Jews).

One reason non-Christian people are fighting Christmas celebrations are as follows: Christmas is a church-created holiday and a church-sponsored holiday. In some places, government employees are FORCED to take vacation time off between Christmas and the new year, just for this one particular religious holiday. Whereas if they want to take time off for other religious holidays, like Passover, then they must take additional vacation time off. If they didn't have to take time off for Christmas, they could use it for their own time.

The Christmas tree is a very common pagan symbol for fertility and also the combination of Earth spirits and Air / Sky spirits. Some of the ancient Middle East religions surrounding old Israel used the tree as a "connection" with the goddess Ashtoreth (and other names given to the fertility goddess). The ancient Babylonians used trees during the time of the winter solstice, now the time of Christmas , for their gods, such as Marduk. The tree itself became the object of worship in that the gods and goddesses were said to either live in the tree or else come alight in the tree during certain ceremonies. Also trees (or poles) were used by many European and Mediterranean tribes to mark the solar sun path during the year. The tree or pole was considered a symbol of male sexuality and spirituality by certain pagans (due to its vertical shape). During the winter solstice, the tree or wooden pole would cast the longest shadow, indicating a "sacred" time for people to contact the spirits.

The Celts and other ancients of Ireland have their sacred openings pointed to the sunset of the winter solstice at which time the shamans would take people to the sacred mounds and go through a vision quest, facing the setting winter sun. This occurred around December 21 through the 28 or so, and when Christianity came to the British Isles, these Celtic customs were adapted by the Christians so that the pagans would be able to be more "Christian" while keeping their old festivals.

In Biblical thought, trees were used as metaphors for righteous people (as in the Psalms), but not as worship objects or sexual spirituality or others uses that the pagans used and are now sugar-coated by the Church.

The custom of kissing under the mistletoe is closely related to a Scandinavian goddess. Frigga, the goddess of love in Norse mythology and from whom we get "Friday", is strongly associated with mistletoe, which has been used as a decoration in homes for thousands of years. Mistletoe is associated with many pagan rituals. In fact, the Christian church disliked the plant so much, thanks to its pagan associations, that it forbade its use in any form. Some churches continued this ban as late as the 20th century! According to Charles Panati's excellent book, Extraordinary Origins of Ordinary Things, holly became a Christian substitute for mistletoe, which is why we "deck the halls" with it. The sharply pointed leaves in holly were supposed to symbolize the thorns in Christ's crown and the red berries were to symbolize his blood.

BTW, Santa is a rendition of the Siberian shaman who often wore a red suit and had bells or rattles with him. In certain tribes, an animal would be sacrificed to the spirits, a robe or felt dipped into the blood of the sacrificial animal, and then the shaman would get into a vision quest using sea shells (later metal cymbals) that were shaken to get the shaman's conscience into the spirit world. The shaman would bring back things ("gifts") for people from the spirits to the people. Since this was done at the winter solstice, Santa became the Christian adaptation of the Siberian (Russian and Scandinavian) shaman bearing gifts at the Christmas equivalent of Winter Solstice connections.)

mms://msmedia.a7.org/arutz7/shows/yf/yishai071224-2.mp3
An audio with a deep look into what the church leaders knew about the holiday, including its history of human sacrifice (with cookies in the shape of the victims), slaughter of Jewish people, and other nasty things.

There are other records that are available in the church's history, but
not covered in this audio.

And as a final note, the real birth of Jesus was probably at the time of the feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), since that was the expected time of Messianic revelations and deliverances during the Second Temple times and the time of the Christian scriptures. See Acts 26:14 for the culture and language of that time.