On the way to Church, Mom used to recite this, more or less> "Well, it's in one way or another essentially the old religion everyone mostly shares in history, the king dies, and is reborn in a new body...ritualistically in our time, with an axe in some old times...when most people lived with the wise old women and sometimes their husbands, maybe, choosing the new king...new for a year, on probation."
And yes indeed, we went to Church and prayed, thence home hearth and family, without TV. Grandfather recited poetry sometimes, while we listened in awe. The western Christmas is mostly Roman, overlain on Pagan forms with a pollution of commercial dross.