Purloining a holiday

Rico says that Jesus (assuming there was one) was born in the summertime (thus the shepherds and their flocks; an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE placed his birth on 28 March), but when Rome got suckered into becoming Christian, the Church took over a convenient December holiday, Saturnalia, and thus we're all celebrating nothing, as usual, this time of year:

The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves.

Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week-long period of lawlessness celebrated between 17 December and 25 December.  During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration.  The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the Lord of Misrule.  Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week.  At the festival’s conclusion, on 25 December, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival, hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate Saturnalia as Christians. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, 25 December, to be Jesus’ birthday.
Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia.  As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, writes: “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

Rico says caroling could make a big comeback if they did it naked...