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That the sun does return remains the primary reason for this holiday for folks like myself. In the ancient world. In many parts of the world today, this is a fraught time to be born, just before the hardest part of the year, the lean time, the famine time, as last summer's stores of food run out.
Connecting the birth of Jesus with the original pagan meaning of the holiday of Yule was probably a useful tool when there was an interest in promoting a new religion, so that's no doubt why we still celebrate his birthday at this time. After the Solstice, the sun begins to add a few minutes to its daily presence with each passing day. Nevertheless, January, February and March will be hard, despite the growing light here in the northern hemisphere, as the land must thaw and warm again. In terms of survival, it's more likely he was born in spring or summer, not "in the cold of winter when half spent was the night."
Personally, I don't doubt that Jesus was born or that he preached a world-altering message. He gave, to those "with ears to hear," a guide to dealing with the inevitable travails of life, and taught a path to spiritual growth. The summation of this teaching is to be found in the Beatitudes, believed by many scholars to be the bedrock Christian message. The Beatitudes may be hard to follow--and sometimes they are even harder to interpret, since two thousand years (and almost as many translations into various, evolving languages) often cloaks their meaning. Jesus wasn't a believer in a religion which was only accessible to wealthy people. His condemnation of the "scribes and pharisees," a class whose elaborations of ritual, he believed, kept faith beyond the reach of ordinary people, makes this plain.
If you doubt the sun's importance in the grand scheme of things, remember, none of us would be here to wonder about religion or science without our planet's perfect orbit around our happily stable star. May the coming new year be a more peaceful one.
