Hi Joe & All,Among the historians of the modern Pagan movement as well as esteemed individuals such as Joseph Campbell is is generally considered that the Christian Church did not create holidays or celebrations to directly counteract the Pagan celebrations. Insead, what usually happened was that the King, Prince or Chieftain of a certain place converted to Christianity and made a decree that everyone in his land had to convert. The cycle of celebrations would have their "meaning" changed but much of the ritual stayed the same.
This was likely to be done to sort of wean the people away from the old religion. In place where that didn't work, the Christian Church killed people.
Did the Church have malicious intent in taking over the ancient rituals? In many ways probably not, but the be honest, when you are a leader of the "one true religion" it is easy to treat other faiths as wrong, misguided or evil.
Another bit of evidence for how the Christians approached the conversion of Pagans is that so many of the Catholic Saints are actually based on Pagan Deities. There was a whole industry in the middle ages in developing the biographies of invented saints. Haigiography is the name for that.
pax yall