I say that because that greeting is sort of semi-politically incorrect.

Happy Holiday is inclusive, Merry Christmas is exclusive. So those who use the latter are excluded.

It is generally known that the Emperor Constantine who legalized Christianity and called the Council of Nicaea was a Mithraian. It is assumed he was baptized on his death bed.

It is generally known that Saturday was well known to be the Sabbath. But under Constantine Christians adopted Sunday as the Sabbath.

Sunday was the Holy Day of Mithras.

Christmas was the birthday of Mithras!

These two facts have always been mentioned and instantly avoided.

If Constantine had originally been a Moslem, and made the Sabbath a Friday you would instantly have some questions about that. But I have never heard anybody discuss WHY the Church adopted Mithras’ holy day and Mithras’ birthday.

Mithraism came from Zoroastrianism. In the Gospel, the Magi, then well known as the priests of the largest religion known by Romans, accept Christ as the Savior at his birth, whereas the Jews certainly did not.

I am fascinated by this precisely because my specialty is not theology, but politics.

There were a huge number of Mithraians at the time of the Council of Nice. They were concentrated in the military forces.

No one goes to pieces when one mentions that Christianity replaced each god with a saint to pray to. A god for each purpose was smoothly replaced by a saint for each purpose. It was simply a matter of what Paul said, “All things to all men.”

But Pauline politics in spreading Christianity did not start or end with saints replacing gods.

I cannot understand why other people who are fascinated by history and politics do not have the same itch to know the process in detail by which these compromises were made. Given the loud and sometimes bloody fights over the Divinity of Jesus was God and other doctrines, I kind of doubt somebody just walked in and said, “Hey, gang, I have an idea!”

“Let’s change all the Holy Days and invite the Mithraians to join us!”

It is hard to believe that people who claim to be historians or political scientists just leave such questions unasked.

Christmas is a Public Secret.