Think how the pagans must feel at Christmas

’Tis the season for Christian clergy to issue jeremiads about the paganization of Christmas and reminding anyone who will listen that “Jesus is the reason for the season.�?/P>

In fact, a good case can be made for saying the opposite is true. We do not know when Jesus was born, though it was probably sometime between 7 and 4 BC. The 6th-century monk who gave us our BC-AD designation, Dionysius Exiguus, got the math wrong. He also cemented in place an earlier, though not universal, custom that placed the celebration of Jesus�?birth at the winter solstice, which is when the steadily shortening days turn around and the faintest hope of spring appears with the gradually lengthening daylight. The idea was that the hope to be found in nature symbolized the hope to be found in the birth of Jesus.