Ah, yes, the great Yule Festival. What is now the Christmas holiday and celebration was indeed once a Pagan festival which celebrated the end of the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, Dec 22-23, and the subsequent return of the sun...as the days start getting longer after the winter solstice. It pre-existed Christianity for thousands of years...probably tens of thousands of years, in fact. The return of longer days is a VERY important event in Nature, as human life depends on the return of warm weather and the annual growing season.

The Romans grafted the Christian religion onto that ancient festival. It was common in those times to move a new religion onto old festival dates from previous religions.

I suspect they then added 3 days (Dec 23,24,25) to symbolize the 3 days that Christ supposedly lay in the tomb (or descended into Hades...whichever version you prefer) before rising on the symbolic 25th.

Interestingly enough, the old festival celebrated the rebirth of the sun (in the sky)....the new festival as designated by the Christians celebrated the rebirth of the Son (Jesus). I doubt that that was a mere coincidence. Many of the old religions saw the sun as a visible manifestation of God. Therefore God's sun = God's Son.

I am not stating my own beliefs here, merely speculating about some of the thinking that may have underlaid the Roman's decision to arbitrarily move Jesus' birthday to December 25th. His actual birthday appears to have been in the mid-Spring, not in December, so the Romans moved it to coincide with the Solstice celebrations...an adroit move, typical of the pragmatic Romans, who always knew how to combine religion and politics for maximum effect. ;-)

Amos, you said, "Well, LH, consider how much spice having a good enemy adds to life! How much drama!! Suddenly, there's tension, a plot, an obstacle to overcome, counter-forces to be out-manuvered! Intentions to be thwarted!! Survival to be gained!! Yaaaayyyyy, team!! Go, go, go!! Hurl 'em back to Nassau, Eli! Bulldog, bulldog!!"

True! Enemies are almost indispensible if you want a dramatic storyline in a book or a movie, aren't they? ;-) In real life, though, the truly wise man does not seek out enemies...unless he simply has no choice about the matter... Crazy Horse, for example, had no choice about the matter after a certain point of the White westward expansion, did he? (but being a Lakota Souix warrior, he would have sought out enemies regardless...they took doing that for granted...it was the path to honour and renown for warriors to fight enemies in that society)

And then you said, "But, of course, there really is only one Enemy, just as there is only one Friend and one God and one Mentor, and that is the Self.

Right on, brother. That's the hard, cold truth...but only one in 10,000 people will admit to it under most circumstances. People would always rather think the enemy is the "other guy", because it relieves them of all responsibility for their own actions, and it gives them full rein to hate, judge, and condemn.

Jesus (and Buddha) (and Krishna) advised against all of that kind of negative judgement of others, and, boy, was he (Jesus) detested by a lot of people for having done so! It ruins most people's fun totally when they hear his opinion on that matter. ;-) They just hate having their right to enjoy their hatred disallowed by some meddling holy man. Such holy men are to be considered lucky if they don't get crucified by an angry mob, matter of fact.