John Stott on Christmas

"Three or four centuries seem to have elapsed after the birth of Christ before Christmas enjoyed a fixed position in the Western church calendar and Christians regularly celebrated it. This may have been due partly to a confusion. People spoke of Christ driving his chariot across the sky like the Sun God. In fact, because Christians worshipped on Sundays, and often turned East to do so, many pagans thought that Christians were sun-worshippers. Not till the fourth century did the Western church begin to celebrate December 25 (the birthday of the Sun God at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year) as the nativity of Christ."

John R.W. Stott in The Incomparable Christ (2001), 126.