The true meaning of Christmas

It's the time of the year again, where people don their festive suits and have a gathering, but many has mistaken the true identity of Christmas. Some preach that it's the celebration of Christ's birth, but history has a different take on it.

For example, a simple google search for the origin revealed this site which has almost all that you want to know about the origin of Christmas. To be fair, it's a jewish site instead of an atheist one.

but in summary, the details are like this:
1) No biblical references has an account on when Christ was born.
2) Historians and Catholic researchers have different opinions, most think he's born in September, but some says March.
3) Christmas was celebrated for other reasons;
- i) St. Nicholas (aka Santa Claus) - which I think should be a better reason to celebrate than the birth of Jesus
- ii) Roman Pagan Celebration
- iii) Celebration in accordance to the winter solstice
4) Irrelevant to this post, but apparently Jewish people has been "mistreated" by on Christmas day on many occasions. Which is interesting because I never knew that before.

Then, many other deities from other religions/myths claims Dec 25th to be their birthday. Hmm.. I smell a conspiracy of some sort. Link

And reason explained: To encourage conversion from Paganism to Christianity, Pope Julius 1 declared Christmas a day to celebrate the birth of Christ. Link: more background on Christmas.

some allegations and explanations from the bible (if it were any indication of anything true at all):
Luke 2:8 explains that when Christ was born, “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” Note that they were “abiding” in the field. This never happened in December. Both Ezra 10:9-13 and the Song of Solomon 2:11 show that winter was the rainy season and shepherds could not stay on cold, open fields at night."

But as a person of no religious affiliation, what does Christmas really mean?
Christmas, is a secular holiday, decreed by the Pope and Castro alike. Cuba, an atheist nation, has the allowance of letting her people celebrate Christmas . However the same gesture was not reciprocated amongst fundamentalists who insisted upon remembering Christ and not Santa on Christmas day.

Christmas is a day to celebrate generosity, instead of cruelty and religious dogmatism.

Christmas is more than a day to remember Christ, it's a day we can all celebrate, regardless of our religion (or lack thereof). Its meaning is simple, as Christmas is really a day to get together and relax, and we can all enjoy the Christmas spirit, without a hint of religion.

To all non-Christians friends, hope you had an enjoyable Christ-less Christmas. To Christian friends, hope you don't think Christmas is for Christ alone, and hope you had an enjoyable Christmas too. To my jewish friends, hope you had a good Hanukkah. To my African-American friends, hope you have a good Kwanzaa. To my pagan readers, hope you had a good Osiris, Horus etc day. To my Hindu friends, hope you had fun celebrating Krishna's birthday. And if I left anyone/anygod's birthday out, Happy Birthday!