User blog comment:Kwiksilver/Countdown to Christmas/@comment-477220-20091220043450

@Sancho

It was created for pagans to join, and so was Easter. While they thought that celebrating Christ's birth and death would make them closer to god, they purposefully chose those dates, since they were the days of other pagan holidays. That way, when a pagan joined their religion, they could still celebrate their holidays while being a Christian.

And Santa was real. He was a bishop who lived in Turkey and rode on a donkey-pulled sleigh.