LiS - I am probably feeling a little touchy today - in fact I know I am, but I DO get very tired of getting blamed for the actions of people many centuries ago.....and more or less getting told that my celebration of a religious festival that is important to my faith is invalid because another religion happens to have celebrated a festival at the same time.....I am not excusing the Christians who did deliberatly try to subvert the pagan celebrations by co-opting holy days and celebrations, but after hundreds of years the Christian celebrations DO have some validity in their own right (or "rites")
I can imagine the furor if a similar stance was taken regarding Kwanzaa (did I spell that correctly?) which WAS made up out of whole cloth within the last few decades.