Festivals in other cultures around December 25

Some festivities that coincide with that period were of a pagan nature. Some cultures mention some sun god in their astrological rituals; such as Apollo and Helios (in Rome and Greece), Mitra (in Persia), Huitzilopochtli (in Tenochtitlán), among others. Some cultures believed that the sun god was born on December 21, the shortest day of the year, and that the days got longer as the god got older. In other cultures it was believed that the sun god died that day, only to return to another cycle:

The Romans celebrated on December 25 the festival of the Natalis Solis Invicti or Birth of the Sun unbeaten, associated with the birth of Apolo.15 On December 25 was considered as winter solstice day, and that the Romans called mist; when Julio César introduced his calendar in the year 45 a. C., on December 25, it should be located between December 21 and 22 of our Gregorian Calendar. From this celebration, the idea of ​​December 25 was taken as the date of the birth of Jesus Christ. Another Roman festival called Saturnalia, in honor of Saturn, lasted about seven days and included the winter solstice. For this celebration the Romans postponed all business and wars, had exchanges of gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves. Such traditions resemble current Christmas traditions and were used to establish a link between the two holidays.

The Germans and Scandinavians celebrated on December 26 the birth of Frey, the Nordic god of the rising sun, rain and fertility. In those holidays they adorned an evergreen tree, that represented the Yggdrasil or tree of the Universe, custom that was transformed into the Christmas tree when the Christianity arrived at the North of Europe

During the winter, the Aztecs celebrated the advent of Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun and of war, in the Panquetzaliztli month, which would be approximately equivalent to the period of December 7 to 26 of our calendar. Taking advantage of the coincidence of dates, the first evangelizers, the Augustinian religious, promoted the celebration of Christmas and so the pre-Hispanic god disappeared and they kept the celebration, giving it Christian characteristics.