[Graves]

"Added thoughts are of course welcome."

Fine.

Which to go with, this or that person's personal brilliant speculations?
or
The considered judgment as to what is and always has been the Tradition of the Church?

Seems to me like a no-brainer for a bear of no brain like me. So I'll go with the second option. With that option, my only task to to nail down what the Tradition really is. Is it December 25 by the calendar of 1582 or December 25 by the calendar of A.D.1?

[Biker Pat]

The Tradition of the Church somewhere comes back to an arbitrary decision some man or men made somewhere along the line. My understanding is that the church celebrated the birth of Christ to coincide with the Roman feast of Saturnalia, basically a 12 day event of debauchery and drunkenness. The early Christians did this for 2 reasons: One, because they did not want to stand out as not celebrating something during a time of persecution, and two, they wanted something to offer new converts to keep them from getting drawn away from the faith at this time (hence, the '12 days of Chrismas').

As far as I can tell, the actual date of Christ's birth is irrelevant. If it were a big deal, God surely would have revealed it, don't you think?

The main thing is to celebrate it in the true meaning and spirit it deserves, to commemorate what his coming did for us, be it in December, April, or next Tuesday.