"...Many of the world's crucified godmen have their traditional birthdays on December 25th ("Christmas").This date is set because the ancients recognized that ( from a geocentric perspective in the northern hemisphere) the sun makes an annual descent southward until after midnight of Dec. 21st, the winter solstice, when it stops moving southerly for three days and was "born again" after midnight of Dec. 24th. Thus, these many different cultures celebrated with great joy the "sun of God's" birthday on December 25th."

[ Acharya S.: The Christ Conspiracy, Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999. p154 ]

"In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the day begins to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that turning-point of the year. The ritual of the nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!” The Egyptians even represented the newborn sun by the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte... Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness.(Jesus)"

[ Frazer, James.: The Golden Bough, Touchstone, 1963. Page 415-417 ]

[ Massey, Gerald.: The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, The Book Tree, . Pages 40-43 ]