IS CHRISTMAS REALLY PAGAN? Chris discusses the origins of the Christmas holiday. It is often given out that celebrating the birth of Christ is of pagan origin, something created by the Church to replace the ancient feast of Saturnalia. But a new article challenges that perspective, and presents strong arguments suggesting that the replacement was the other way around. Did the pagans actually create the feast of the "birth of the unconquered Sun" as an alternative to celebrating the birth of Christ? Professor William Tighe says this was almost certainly the case. Even the Biblical Archaeology Society argues that the earliest celebrations for Christmas "come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions."