Some Christmas traditions mirror pre-Christian festivities, but some pagan influences may have been overstated.

In Solvang, a town known for its Christmas spirit, a pagan tree-burning ritual serves as the season's biggest highlight.

Christmas is, ultimately, a reincarnation of our ancient, pagan festivals, celebrating the turning point of the year. This is the moment when days start to lengthen and the world starts to turn ...

Although today's commercialized Christmas is considered distinctly American, the festival was banned in the nation's earliest days. New England's Puritan leaders considered it a pagan or papist ...

"The view that Christmas was introduced as a reaction to pre-existing pagan practices has been a futile point of view; instead historians such as Martin Wallraff argue that they were 'parallel ...

And Christmas is the 25th day of December ... “It was probably a pagan holiday because it’s not uncommon in history that when Judaism or Christianity wanted to ‘obliterate’ a pagan ...

Credit: Anna Efetova via Getty Images It's often claimed that many of today's Christmas traditions derive from the pre-Christian observances of pagan cults suppressed by Roman authorities.