Don’t know about the shepherds in the field but to send the population on the road in winter time so they can pay their tax seems don’t seem right.
Rome needs its money
It is not mocking God to suggest that the day we modern humans have selected to celebrate Jesus’s birth may not be His actual birth date. There are many reasons to think it is incorrect. Doesn’t make the adoration less valid
We’re talking about an emperor, a dictator. He would not have cared what the weather was like in his eagerness to gain tax revenue. He would not have cared about the distance a pregnant woman would have to travel, whether she had the extreme luxury of riding on a donkey or she walked, which is more likely.