It means lots of thing to lots of people, to some it means nothing !!



The origins of Christmas may have stated with the romans and their festival called Saturnalia. Beginning on December 15th, the Romans held this seven-day celebration in honor of Saturn, god of agriculture.
The winter solstice often fell around December 25 on the Julian calendar—following these seven days of feasting, revelry, and merrymaking.

For many retailers it is the making of breaking of the calender years sales.
Some can predict their entire years sales based on the 10 days leading up to christmas day.

For retailers, it is an important time.

Christmas sometimes "starts" for me with sending christmas cards .

Here is a quick history of them :-



"A relatively recent phenomenon, the sending of commercially printed Christmas cards originated in London in 1843.

Previously, people had exchanged handwritten holiday greetings. First in person. Then via post. By 1822, homemade Christmas cards had become the bane of the U.S. postal system. That year, the Superintendent of Mails in Washington, D.C., complained of the need to hire sixteen extra mailmen. Fearful of future bottlenecks, he petitioned Congress to limit the exchange of cards by post, concluding, "I don’t know what we’ll do if it keeps on."

Not only did it keep on, but with the marketing of attractive commercial cards the postal burden worsened. The first Christmas card designed for sale was by London artist John Calcott Horsley.  
Who sent the first
Christmas card?

A respected illustrator of the day, Horsley was commissioned by Sir Henry Cole, a wealthy British businessman, who wanted a card he could proudly send to friends and professional acquaintances to wish them a "merry Christmas."
Sir Henry Cole was a prominent innovator in the 1800s. He modernized the British postal system, managed construction of the Albert Hall, arranged for the Great Exhibition in 1851, and oversaw the inauguration of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Most of all, Cole sought to "beautify life," and in his spare time he ran an art shop on Bond Street, specializing in decorative objects for the home. In the summer of 1843, he commissioned Horsley to design an impressive card for that year’s Christmas."


http://www.ideafinder.com/features/everwonder/won-christcard.htm



Sir Henry Cole sounded a good guy to me.

Henry was just one of long line of people trying to commercialise Christmas. Not sure if that makes him a good bloke or not.

Saint Nicholas

The origin of Santa Claus goes back to an altruistic bishop named Saint Nicholas who lived in Myra in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) during the fourth century. There is so much legend about this early Saint that little solid truth is known about him, so little in fact, that Pope Paul VI ordered his feast day on December 6th dropped from the liturgical calendar. However, among the many accounts told of the Saint are the two that tell of a bag of gold he allegedly threw through the window of a needy family’s house (wishing to give anonymously) and his secret gifts to three daughters of a poor man unable to pay for their dowries; had it not been for the Saint’s intervention, the girls would have been forced into prostitution.

He has become the patron saint of scholars, sailors, virgins, merchants—even thieves, but especially children, the latter to whom he was said to give gifts, arguably based on the legend of the poor man’s virgin daughters. In Germany, Holland, Rome, and other nearby countries, accounts began circulating that he rode a white horse through the sky, often accompanied by an elf named Black Peter who whipped the children who misbehaved. He had the long flowing robes of a bishop, wore a white beard, and was honored on December 6th, a holiday which eventually merged with December 25th in most countries. However, children in the The Netherlends, Belgium, and Luxembourg still leave a wooden shoe near the fireplace filled with straw for Saint Nicholas’ donkey. In the morning, the straw is gone and gifts are left in its place. In these countries, December 25th is purely a religious holiday.



Coca Cola

It was to be Thomas Nast and the Coca-Cola bottling company that would turn Santa into the modern American invention. Nast was an illustrator for Harper’s magazine from the 1860s to the 1880s and he depicted Santa’s workshop at the North Pole and his list of good and bad children. Then in 1931, Coca-Cola ran a series of advertisements depicting Santa as a fully human giver of gifts, exactly as he appears today.

In 1939, Robert May, an advertising agent working for the Montgomery Ward department store, developed Rudolf, the ninth, red-nosed reindeer as a highly lucrative sales ploy. Santa Claus and his reindeer did much to advance the capitalistic interests of the commercial sector, and in-store displays featuring Santa became common place.

....this was written.
It is also one of the many meanings people hold in Christmas.

     "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
      though you are small among the clans of Judah,
      out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel,
      whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."


Micah 5:2