THANX TO THE GERMAN PAGANS IN THE 5TH CENTURY

We have Christmas, at least according to Marcia Colish's impressive book on Western civilization between 400 and 1400 AD. Here's the background:

While Christianity found its way to Ireland in a more or less haphazard manner, from Roman Britain, from contacts between Irish mariners and monastic centers in southern France, and eventually by a mission sent by Pope Celestine I in 431, first in the person of Palladius and, on his death, by Patrick (c. 389-c. 461), the missions which popes sent from south to north dealt mostly with Germans. Good indices of the problems faced by these representatives of Roman order and Latin Christian culture in their encounter with the Germans, and their responses to these problems, are the books of penitentials, written between the fifth and seventh cen­turies for the aid of pastors administering penance to new converts, and other strategies and adaptations church leaders made. The penitentials instruct pastors to be on the alert for sins reflecting pagan survivals. They also suggest ways to reconceptualize Christian doctrines and practices that conflict with Germanic sen­sibilities. Parallel with the building of churches on the sites of pagan temples in Rome, missionaries had to address the Germanic veneration of sacred trees and groves and the importance for them of fertility rites occurring at the winter sol­stice. The result was the 'baptism' of the sacred tree as the Christmas tree or Yule log and the promotion of Christmas as a holiday, given much more attention than it had drawn in the liturgy of the early church.